America and the Sea: A Maritime History

by Benjamin Woods Labaree

America and the Sea: A Maritime History is the most comprehensive maritime history of the United States available today. Spanning the centuries from Native American and Viking maritime activities before Columbus through today's maritime enterprise, the text provides a new history of the U.S. from the fundamental perspective of the sea that surrounds it and the rivers and lakes that link its vast interior to the seacoast. America and the Sea has been gracefully written by six prominent maritime-history scholars whose individual areas of research and teaching range from labor to technology, from the fisheries to the U.S. Navy. Their text incorporates considerations of art, literature and poetry along with discussions of the economic, political, diplomatic and technological foundations of American maritime history.

686 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Benjamin Woods Labaree is a historian of American colonial and maritime history. The son of Yale University Farnam Professor of History Leonard Woods Labaree, he earned his bachelors degree (1950) there, followed by Masters (1953) and Ph.D. (1957) in history at Harvard University.

After receiving several teaching positions at Harvard, he was appointed dean (1963-67) of Williams College, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he remained a professor of history until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1992, and continued to teach as a visiting professor at several institutions until 1998. He also served as Director of the Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime History, and was Director of the Williams College-Mystic Seaport Program (commonly called Williams-Mystic) at Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, Connecticut, 1977–89.