Deep Blue: Stories of Shipwreck, Sunken Treasure and Survival: Stories of Shipwreck, Sunken Treasure, and Survival Audiobook

About the Authors

Herman Melville (1819–1891) was born in New York City. Family hardships forced him to leave school for various occupations, including shipping as a cabin boy to Liverpool in 1839—a voyage that sparked his love for the sea. A shrewd social critic and philosopher in his fiction, he is considered an outstanding writer of the sea and a great stylist who mastered both realistic narrative and a rich, rhythmical prose. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumously published novella Billy Budd.

Nathaniel Philbrick is the National Book Award–winning author of In the Heart of the Sea, Revenge of the Whale, Sea of Glory, and others. Philbrick has won numerous awards for his work, including the Massachusetts Book Award, the Albion-Monroe Award, and the New England Book Award; his book Mayflower was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. His book The Last Stand was named an ALA Notable Book and was the basis for a two-hour PBS American Experience film called Custer’s Last Stand. A graduate of Duke and Brown Universities, he currently lives in New England.

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) was an American novelist, poet, and journalist. He worked as a reporter of slum life in New York and a highly paid war correspondent for newspaper tycoons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. He wrote many works of fiction, poems, and accounts of war, all well received but none as acclaimed as his 1895 Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage. Today he is considered one of the most innovative American writers of the 1890s and one of the founders of literary realism.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was born in Scotland. He studied engineering and law at the University of Edinburgh and then began writing while traveling in France. The publication of Treasure Island in 1883 brought him fame and entered him on a course of romantic fiction beloved by young and old alike.

Philip Ashton, a man from Massachusetts, survived as a castaway on an island for sixteen months before being rescued by a ship from New England.

Patrick O’Brian (1914–2000), a translator and author of biographies, was best known as the author of the highly acclaimed Aubrey–Maturin series of historical novels. Set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars ,this twenty-volume series centers on the enduring friendship between naval officer Jack Aubrey and physician and spy Stephen Maturin. The Far Side of the World, the tenth book in the series, was adapted into a 2003 film directed by Peter Weir and starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany. The film was nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture. He wrote acclaimed biographies of Pablo Picasso and Sir Joseph Banks. He also translated many works from the French, among them the novels and memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Lacouture’s biographies of Charles de Gaulle.

Xe Sands has more than a decade of experience bringing stories to life through narration, performance, and visual art, including recordings of the Nightwalkers series from Jaquelyn Frank. She has received several honors, including AudioFile Earphones Awards and a coveted Audie Award, and she was named Favorite Debut Romance Narrator of 2011 in the Romance Audiobooks poll.

Farley Mowat is a Canadian author and environmentalist. His works have been translated into fifty-two languages and he has sold more than seventeen million books. He achieved fame with the publication of his books on the Canadian North, such as People of the Deer and Never Cry Wolf. The latter, an account of his experiences with wolves in the Arctic, was made into a film, and was released in 1983.

About the Narrators

Richard Rohan is a stage, film, and voice-over actor who has narrated hundreds of audiobooks over the last decade, in every genre. He is particularly proud of his work as director and performer on the acclaimed Space Fantasy audio drama series Deathstalker.

Barrett Whitener has been narrating audiobooks since 1992. His recordings have won several awards, including the prestigious Audie Award and numerous Earphones Awards. AudioFile magazine has named him one of the Best Voices of the Century.