James P. Delgado

 An immersive dive into the meaning and mystique of shipwrecks

The sea is the largest museum on earth, with more than a million lost ships resting in its depths. Those shipwrecks date back thousands of years, some from civilizations long vanished, others from more recent history. Some are famous, others obscure and unremembered but each has a story to tell.

In The Great Museum of the Sea, archaeologist, museum director, television host, journalist, and award-winning author James Delgado takes the reader on a personal tour of the world's wrecks, including many of the more than a hundred lost ships he has personally discovered and investigated, including Titanic, USS Arizona, and the slave ship Clotilda. The Great Museum of the Sea vividly explains how and why ships experience catastrophe at sea, and why their remains have captured our imagination for millennia.

Shipwrecks engage us in many ways--we treat them as tombs, but also recover them for museums and memorials, and salvage them for treasure. Authoritative and informed by decades of shipwreck expeditions, Delgado's account offers an insider's perspective, taking the reader into the deep and behind the scenes. 

A Human History of Shipwrecks

The Great Museum of the Sea

James P. (Senior Vice President Delgado, Senior Vice President SEARCH Inc)

A detailed and riveting account of the U.S. Navy's greatest mutiny and its wide-ranging cultural and historical impact The greatest controversy in the history of the U.S. Navy of the early American Republic was the revelation that the son of the Secretary of War had seemingly plotted a bloody mutiny that would have turned the U.S. brig Somers into a pirate ship. The plot discovered, he and his co-conspirators were hastily condemned and hanged at sea. The repercussions of those acts brought headlines, scandal, a fistfight at a cabinet meeting, a court martial, ruined lives, lost reputations, and tales of a haunted ship bound for the devil and lost tragically at sea with many of its crew. The Somers affair led to the founding of the U.S. Naval Academy and it remains the Navy's only acknowledged mutiny in its history. The story also inspired Herman Melville's White-Jacket and Billy Budd. Others connected to the Somers included Commodore Perry, a relation and defender of the Somers' captain Mackenzie; James Fenimore Cooper, whose feud with the captain, dating back to the War of 1812, resurfaced in his reportage of the affair; and Raphael Semmes, the Somers' last caption who later served in the Confederate Navy. The Curse of the Somers is a thorough recreation of this classic tale, told with the help of recently uncovered evidence. Written by a maritime historian and archaeologist who helped identify the long-lost wreck and subsequently studied its sunken remains, this is a timeless tale of life and death at sea. James P. Delgado re-examines the circumstances, drawing from a rich historical record and from the investigation of the ship's sunken remains. What surfaces is an all-too-human tale that resonates and chills across the centuries.

The Secret History Behind the U. S. Navy's Most Infamous Mutiny

The Curse of the Somers

Deserted homes and crumbling concrete bunkers that remain on the atoll itself, the ghost fleet of Operation Crossroads is an archaeological legacy from the beginning of the atomic age.

The Sunken Ships of Bikini Atoll

Ghost Fleet

The theory and practice of underwater archaeology includes nearly every archaeological discipline from prehistoric archaeology to the modern era.

Encyclopaedia of Underwater and Maritime Archaeology

Clive Cussler

'Silent Killers is a triumph that is educational as well as highly entertaining.' - Clive Cussler James P. Delgado, President and CEO of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, presents a detailed and visually stunning examination of the history and development of the modern nuclear submarine. Calling on his training as a nautical archaeologist who was among the first explorers to dive the Titanic, Delgado recreates the story of the submarine from the bottom up – that is through eerie photographs of subs at the bottom of the sea. In addition, he explores submarine technology, from wooden to iron to steel hulls, from hand-cranked to nuclear-powered propulsion, from candlelight to electricity, from gunpowder 'torpedoes' to nuclear missiles. An esteemed underwater archaeologist and marine historian, Jim Delgado has compiled an extraordinary history of the dragons of the deep.

Submarines and Underwater Warfare

Silent Killers

David W. Jourdan

In 1944 Allied codebreakers learned the Imperial Japanese Navy had dispatched the cargo submarine I-52 to occupied France with tons of military supplies and payment--in gold--for German assistance. I-52 undertook the mission as part of the Yanagi missions, a military program meant to alleviate Japan's desperate need for military material and technical knowledge. After tracking I-52 from Asia to the Atlantic, the Allies destroyed the vessel in a battle that ended the Yanagi missions and left I-52 an unlikely treasure ship on the seafloor. David W. Jourdan adds to the history of I-52 with a spellbinding account of his efforts to find the sunken submarine. One of the first joint American-Russian research expeditions, the search for the wreck combined a team effort, exhaustive detective work, and a dramatic battle with the sea. The effort paid off when the group found I-52's nearly intact hull three miles down. The expedition also earned an unexpected historical dividend when it uncovered one-of-a-kind recordings of American Avenger torpedo bomber attacks on an enemy submarine. Part war tale and part seagoing adventure, Operation Rising Sun tells the story of the two very different missions to find submarine I-52.

The Sinking of Japan's Secret Submarine I-52

Operation Rising Sun

The obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 brought the world to a stand still. This unimaginable shock confirmed to the world that the race to develop a working atomic weapon during World War II had been won by the American-led international effort. Horrific and controversial even today, these first uses of the atomic bomb had intense ramifications not only on the continued development of the bomb, but also on politics and popular culture. As well as the technological development, historian James Delgado also examines how the US Army Air Force had to develop the capacity to deliver the weapons, and examines the sites where development and testing took place, in order to give a comprehensive history of the dawning of the nuclear age.

The Atomic Bomb, from the Manhattan Project to the Cold War

Nuclear Dawn

A Submerged Cultural Resources Assessment of the Sunken Fleet of Operation Crossroads at Bikini and Kwajalein Atoll Lagoons, Republic of the Marshall Islands

The Archeology of the Atomic Bomb

Described as a "forest of masts," San Francisco's Gold Rush waterfront was a floating economy of ships and wharves, where a dazzling array of global goods was traded and transported. Drawing on excavations in buried ships and collapsed buildings from this period, James P. Delgado re-creates San Francisco's unique maritime landscape, shedding new light on the city's remarkable rise from a small village to a boomtown of thousands in the three short years from 1848 to 1851. Gleaning history from artifacts—preserves and liquors in bottles, leather boots and jackets, hulls of ships, even crocks of butter lying alongside discarded guns—Gold Rush Port paints a fascinating picture of how ships and global connections created the port and the city of San Francisco. Setting the city's history into the wider web of international relationships, Delgado reshapes our understanding of developments in the Pacific that led to a world system of trading.

The Maritime Archaeology of San Francisco’s Waterfront

Gold Rush Port

J. Candace Clifford

A guidebook to more than 225 ships on view to the public from Maine to Hawaii, including riverboats, battleships, ocean liners, fishing craft, yachts, and submarines. Also includes a listing of vessels in the National Register of Historic Places.

Great American Ships

Terry Kerby

Stephen Price

Maximilian D. Cremer

Hans K. Van Tilburg

Ole Varmer

Russell Matthews

In the pre-dawn darkness of December 7, 1941, five Imperial Japanese Navy submarines surfaced off the coast of Oahu. Secured to the decks of these vessels were secret weapons to be deployed for the first time in modern warfare: two-man midget submarines, intended to enter Pearl Harbor without being detected and torpedo the US Navy battleships lying at anchor there. None of them would return from their mission. “One of the last remaining and persistent mysteries of the Pearl Harbor attack is that of the Japanese Midget Submarines. It is a fascinating story of innovation, courage, secrets, and failed expectations. And it is not only a story of the morning hours of December 7, but of the years before to develop these weapons and the years after, where they were deployed in the great Pacific War and how they fared as weapons of war.” These words by Daniel J. Basta, from the foreword of this work, capture both the essence and the impact of The Lost Submarines of Pearl Harbor. James P. Delgado and his coauthors have worked on the story of these incredible craft for decades. They combed the records of the US Navy and the recollections of its veterans as well as Japanese, Australian, and British archives in order to uncover the truth. They have logged hours of direct observation and research on the midget subs in their final resting places, in some cases more than 1,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific. And in the end, they have woven a tapestry of scholarship, historical sleuthing, scientific insight, and good storytelling that will enthrall specialists and history enthusiasts alike.

The Lost Submarines of Pearl Harbor

Jim Adams

Joy Waldron Jasper

Featuring interviews with the sailors who survived, the authors present a detailed history of the USS Arizona before, during, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor, bringing to life the courage and bravery of ordinary men.

The Ship, the Men, the Pearl Harbor Attack, and the Symbol That Aroused America

The USS Arizona

Timeline of Chinese, Japanese and Korean dynasties and periods -- Prologue : A divine wind -- Hakozaki -- Asian mariners -- Enter the Mongols -- Khubilai Khan -- The song -- Tsukushi -- The Bun'ei War -- The Mongols return -- Kamikaze -- Takashima -- Broken ships -- Distant seas, distant fields -- The legacy of Khubilai Khan's navy.

In Search of a Legendary Armada

Khubilai Khan's Lost Fleet

A co-host of the television series, The Sea Hunters, chronicles the history of the atom bomb from a military and political perspective while offering insight into Oppenheimer's lesser-known role as the Manhattan Project's head organizer and business manager, tracing the army's integral part in making nuclear weaponry achievable.

Nominating Historic Vessels and Shipwrecks to the National Register of Historic Places

Stephen A. Haller

Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, and Point Reyes National Seashore

Submerged Cultural Resource Assessment

"From an author who has spent four decades in the quest for lost ships, this lavishly illustrated history of naval warfare presents the latest archaeology of sunken warships. It provides a unique perspective on the evolution of naval conflicts, strategies, and technologies, while vividly conjuring up the dangerous life of war at sea"--

A Shipwrecked History from Antiquity to the Cold War

War at Sea

In 2001, while vacationing on Panama’s Pacific coast, maritime archaeologist James P. Delgado came upon the hulk of a mysterious iron vessel, revealed by the ebbing tides in a small cove at Isla San Telmo. Local inquiries proved inconclusive: the wreck was described as everything from a sunken Japanese "suicide" submarine from World War II to a poison-laden "craft of death" that was responsible for the ruin of the pearl beds, decades before. His professional interest fully aroused, Delgado would go on to learn that the wreck was the remains of one of the first successful deep-diving submersibles, built in 1864 by Julius H. Kroehl, an innovator and entrepreneur who initially sought to develop his invention for military use during the Civil War. The craft’s completion coming too late for that conflict, Kroehl subsequently convinced investors that it could be used to harvest pearls from the Pacific beds off Panama, in waters too deep for native pearl divers to reach. In Misadventures of a Civil War Submarine, Delgado chronicles the confluence of technological advancement, entrepreneurial aspiration, American capitalist ambition, and ignorance of the physiological effects of deep diving. As he details the layers of knowledge uncovered by his work both in archival sources and in the field excavation of Kroehl’s ill-fated vessel, Delgado weaves the tangled threads of history into a compelling narrative. This finely crafted saga will fascinate and inform professional archaeologists and researchers, naval historians, students and aficionados of maritime exploration, and interested general readers.

James P. Delgado

Books

Your next favorite book is out there