Abandon Ship : Shipwreck in Art

by Carl Douglas, Björn Hagberg, Martin Widman

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.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published October 26, 2023

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Please see: Carl Douglas


Carl Douglas är dykare och historiker. Han medverkar i boken Vrak i Östersjön och är en av männen bakom fyndet av DC-3:an.

Carl is an entrepreneur and business-leader whose passion has always been the oceans. Carl co-founded Deep Sea Productions with Johan Candert in 1997.

In 2019 he founded the Voice of the Ocean Foundation together with a group of like-minded people. Additionally, he co-led the effort to locate the wreckage of the Swedish Air Force DC-3 intelligence-plane shot down by the Soviet Union in 1952. For this work he received a medal from His Majesty the King of Sweden. He received a BA degree in History from Middlebury College in 1988 and has also received an honorary doctorate for his work with the Baltic Sea.

Reviews

[Ben Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

A phenomenal collection of painted shipwrecks through time, accompanied by stirring and beautifully written accounts.