Lost Warships

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

As soon as people learned to build ships, they used them to go to war.
Lost Warships examines nearly 3000 years of naval warfare. It is easy to
understand James Delgado’s fascination with these sunken vessels.
Unlike land-based archeological sites, which are nearly always spoiled
by later human activity, these ships lie under kilometres of protective
water. Most have lain untouched and forgotten until modern diving
technology finally allowed a select few scientists to unlock their
secrets. Each wreck is a time capsule of its era and of the people and
who built it. Besides ships, Delgado looks at the artifacts and even
human remains that are found on these wrecks. The wrecks featured
include unnamed galleys from the Greek and Roman era, burial ships of
the Vikings, Henry VIII’s Mary Rose, the USS Monitor, the Confederate
submarine H.L. Hunley, the HMS Royal Oak, the Bismark, and the USS
Arizona.

From tiny bateaux that transported colonial troops up and down Lake
Champlain to mighty battleships that carried a crew the size of a small
city, Delgado’s text takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of naval
conflict. He also spikes his text with lots of fascinating tidbits of
history. Ben-Hur fans may be disappointed to find out that the Romans
did not use slaves to power their warships. Word-nerds will learn that
the expressions “first-rate” and “square meal” were coined by
the Royal Navy.

More than 200 photos and sketches support the text. A few of the
archeological survey sketches could have used a little more explanation
so that readers might better understand what they are looking at, but
this minor flaw does not detract from the reader’s overall enjoyment
of the book.