Hands-On Activities

How does a giant cruise ship stay upright? Just how big is an aircraft carrier? How are submarines powered? Join the Stickmen for a close look at how watercrafts work, though be careful―you may get into deep water!

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich houses the largest collection of scale ship models in the world. Many of the models are official, contemporary artifacts made by the craftsmen of the Royal Navy or the shipbuilders themselves, ranging from the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. As such they represent a three-dimensional archive of unique importance and authority. Treated as historical evidence, they offer more detail than even the best plans, and demonstrate exactly what the ships looked like in a way that even the finest marine painter could not achieve. Now available in paperback, this book tells the story of the evolution of the cruising ship under sail. It includes a large number of model photos all in full-color as well as close-up and detail views. These are captioned in depth, but many are also annotated to focus attention on interesting or unusual features. Although pictorial in emphasis, The Sailing Frigate weaves the pictures into an authoritative text, producing an unusual and attractive form of technical history.

Step aboard, buccaneers and book lovers! On the Salty Carrot sails a wild, rowdy band of Buccaneer Bunnies, led by Barnacle Black Ear, the baddest bunny brute of all time. His son, Henry, would rather read books than shout "Shiver me timbers!" or make prisoners walk the plank, even if it means swabbing the decks as punishment. But when a crashing, thrashing, bashing wildcat of a storm threatens them all, will Henry and his landlubbin’ library save the day?

This is the saga of the great Swedish warship, the Vasa. Built to be the crown jewel of the Swedish Navy, the Vasa capsized not a mile into her maiden voyage in 1628―a tragedy resulting in many deaths and great loss. But who was to blame? Award-winning author Russell Freedman explores the history of this ship, and her resurrection from the seas in 1961. William Low’s gorgeous illustrations bring The Sinking of the Vasa to life.

The acclaimed author of Miss Rumphius recounts the lives of four generations living on a New England coastal island and the importance of family ties.The youngest and quietest of 12 children, Matthias grew closest to Tibbets Island, learning its secrets through the years. And though in later years he sailed to faraway places, he always returned to the island he loved.

A child journeys from her bathtub on an imaginary ocean voyage. Her blue boat sails across the bathtub, into the harbor, between the whales, under the moon and the stars...until it manages to find its way home. A simple tale and light-filled watercolors together create the voyage of every child's dream.

Readers today are still fascinated by “Nat", an eighteenth-century nautical wonder and mathematical wizard. Nathaniel Bowditch grew up in a sailor's world—Salem in the early days, when tall-masted ships from foreign ports crowded the wharves. But Nat didn't promise to have the makings of a sailor; he was too physically small. Nat may have been slight of build, but no one guessed that he had the persistence and determination to master sea navigation in the days when men sailed only by “log, lead, and lookout.? Nat's long hours of study and observation, collected in his famous work, The American Practical Navigator (also known as the “Sailors' Bible"), stunned the sailing community and made him a New England hero.

I could hardly talk about a shipping unit without mentioning the classic game Battleship could I?

Complete deck fittings including searchlights, motor launches and whaleboats, rangefinders, ladders, cranes, and tripod masts with observation nests.

Packed with extraordinary illustrations, this history book for children covers everything from warship design to navigation. Biesty's incredible drawings slice through a man-of-war to explore every corner, from the crow's nest to the stinking hold. Packed with fascinating facts and gory details, the pages teem with sailors going about their duties. Find out how gun crews fired a cannon, examine a surgeon's toolkit, and learn the best way to wriggle the maggots out of the ship's biscuits. Look out, too, for the stowaway on every page. He's the one with spiky hair, and there's a reward for his capture!

As a kid, Will Ansel would spend hours rowing the creeks around Annapolis, Maryland. From his boat he could look down on the wrecks of Chesapeake skipjacks, and watch the turtles sun themselves on deckbeams and the tops of centerboard trunks. He found other types of Chesapeake boats there too, including the old "log" boats. Years later, Will built scaled-down skipjacks, wrote about them, and eventually went to work at Mystic Seaport as a ships' carpenter and boatbuilder. Will now lives in Georgetown, Maine, in an old house built at the water's edge, with a small shop and dock. The inventory of boats and kayaks is currently seven. Besides keeping up, using, and adding to these, he does some writing and painting, and work around a cabin in the woods.

Raise the sails and follow the wind across the green sea in this captivating marriage of lyrical prose and intricate illustrations from a renowned West Coast artist.Old wood boat remembers the wind. Dilapidated and parted from the sea, she remembers and waits as her mast cracks and blackberry vines creep across her deck. But one day, a family tows her home. Scraped, scrubbed, sanded, and varnished, she is made beautiful and seaworthy again. After libations have been poured out, the family casts off, and old wood boat embarks on adventure once more. In this love letter to sailing, heralded artist Nikki McClure tells the story of a restored boat in timeless and reverent prose that perfectly accompanies her stunning cut-paper illustrations. At once delicate and bold, each page is masterful, rendered from a single sheet of black paper with precision and care that is sure to enthrall readers from coast to coast.

This classic tale makes the perfect gift for children who love adventure!

A little boy has a toy boat that he made out of a can, a cork, a yellow pencil, and some white cloth. The boy and his boat are inseparable . . . until the day the wind pushes the boat out into the wide lake, and the little boat must face fierce waves, a grumpy ferry, a sassy schooner, and a growling speed boat if he is to find his way home. From Randall de Seve and bestselling artist Loren Long, creator of the Otis series and illustrator of The Little Engine That Could, comes a child-friendly adventure sure to inspire imaginative toy play.

The evolution of shipbuilding reflects the growth of civilization, and in Oars, Sails and Steam, Edwin Tunis has produced a beautifully illustrated and skillfully
written history of water transport from the dugout to the aircraft carrier. He resents the most interesting and important types of boats and ships in chronological order, revealing each advance that made navigation easier, faster, and more efficient. Every page in this delightful book becomes a new adventure in the story of humanity's progress on traveling across the seas. The Egyptian sailboats that plied the waters of the Nile in 4700 b.c. give way to Phoenician warboats, Greek war galleys and Roman triremes, which in turn are surpassed by Norse long ships, Mediterranean carracks, Elizabethan galleons, and British East Indiaman. The Steam Age is represented by John Fitch's 1787 Delaware River steamboat; the 1807 Clermont, which made five miles per hour against the current of the Hudson; and the Curaçao, which in 1827 became the first ship to cross the Atlantic almost entirely under steam power. Graceful clipper ships, profitable whaling barks, reliable tramp steamers, opulent steam liners, and deadly warships, from destroyers to submarines, round out Tunis's illustrated history.

In addition to his fine drawings of the vessels, Tunis includes a glossary of seagoing terms and detailed diagrams that take readers below decks, up in the rigging, and alongside the gunners of the U.S.S. Raleigh. Remarkable for its clarity and accuracy, Oars, Sails and Steam, first published in 1952, is a treasury for all those who are sailors at heart.

 Once, lightships anchored on waters across America, on the oceans, and in the Great Lakes, floating where lighthouses could not be built.

Mr. Small is a sailor in this maritime adventure! Captain Small and his dog Tinker sail and fish together. When a storm comes, Captain Small heads for the safety of the shore. A comforting, nostalgic story full of information about sailing.