The sea has always held a special fascination. It carried people to new continents and enabled trade and progress. But the sea, dark and stormy, also represented a threat to human life.

This book is a dramatic, tempestuous, glorious journey through art history. Spectacular paintings have transformed shipwrecks into powerful metaphors for human vulnerability. These works depict fear and bravery, hope and desperation, life and death – and people’s struggle against immense danger. Rocky coastlines and gales can reduce human ambitions to splinters.

Following on from his successful titles Ghost Ships and Shipwreck, also published by Max Ström, author and historian Carl Douglas has joined forces with marine archaeologist Björn Hagberg and science journalist Martin Widman to create this magnificent volume. They take the reader on a journey spanning several centuries, from medieval mythical disasters via Romantic tragedies to shipwrecks in the contemporary realist era. The introduction is written by Christine Riding, head of the curatorial department at London’s National Gallery.