Atlantic

The incredible story of the legendary 1905 international yacht race for supremacy on the high seas "Outstanding. Cookman is equally adept at depicting the gut-wrenching tension of ocean racing, the politics, intrigues, skullduggery of billionaires, society snobs, and sailors who make Captain Ahab seem the model of restraint, and a gilded, vanished era under the gathering storm clouds of war." -Neil Hanson, author of The Custom of the Sea It was the last and greatest yacht race of a...
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The incredible story of the legendary 1905 international yacht race for supremacy on the high seas "Outstanding. Cookman is equally adept at depicting the gut-wrenching tension of ocean racing, the politics, intrigues, skullduggery of billionaires, society snobs, and sailors who make Captain Ahab seem the model of restraint, and a gilded, vanished era under the gathering storm clouds of war." -Neil Hanson, author of The Custom of the Sea It was the last and greatest yacht race of a gilded age: the emperor of Germany, two British lords, and eight American billionaires racing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to win a solid-gold trophy cup. In eleven of the fastest, most opulent yachts ever built, they battled fog, icebergs, gales, and each other to set an ocean racing record that has yet to be broken. Atlantic is the story of the men, ships, dangers, international intrigue and triumph of the 1905 Kaiser's Cup transatlantic race-and foreshadows the events that would put an end to almost all of those who sailed in it. This dazzling account of a great American yachting victory also illuminates the lavishness of the privileged lives of the last of world's gilded princes-the final gasp of an era that would disappear forever with the coming of World War I and the stock market crash. Scott Cookman (Atlanta, GA), a nonfiction writer, is the author of Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition (Wiley: 0-471-37790-2). His magazine features appear frequently in Field & Stream, and he has also written for Army and Civil War Times. His Man & Mission videos, chronicling America's Mercury 7 astronauts, are a primary attraction at the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame.