The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History Audiobook (Free)

The Gulf of Mexico presents a compelling, salt-streaked narrative of the earth’s tenth most significant body of water. In this superbly written volume, John S. Sledge explores individuals, ships, and towns that have made the Gulf’s history and lifestyle so rich. Many famous numbers who sailed the Gulf’s viridian waters are highlighted, including Ponce de Leon, Robert Cavelier de La Salle, Francis Drake, Elizabeth Agassiz, Ernest Hemingway, and Charles Dwight Sigsbee. Sledge also introduces a about The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History fascinating array of people linked to maritime life in the Gulf, included in this Maya priests, French pirates, BLACK stevedores, and Greek sponge divers.

Gulf events of global historical importance are comprehensive, like the just defeat of equipped and armored steamships by solid wood sailing vessels, the first accurate deep-sea survey and bathymetric map of any ocean basin, the introduction of shipping containers with a previous truck driver disappointed with antiquated loading practices, as well as the most severe environmental disaster in American annals.

Occasionally shifting focus ashore, Sledge explains how people representing a gumbo of ethnicities built a number of the world’s most exotic cities-Havana, New Orleans, and oft-besieged Veracruz, Mexico’s oldest city, founded in 1519 by Hernán Cortes.