Historian Richard M. Jones recounts fifty stories of lost ships throughout history that are among the most important, infamous, and in some cases tragic ships in the whole of history. Starting at the tiny island of Alderney in 1592, the reader journeys through history, through World Wars I and II, into the age of the passenger ferry and finally to the modern-day migrant issues in the Mediterranean Sea.

Never have these fifty wrecks come together in a book that establishes how many lost vessels there are, how deadly many can be, and what this teaches us today about our own history.