Leading trips to see the shipwrecks of the Egyptian Red Sea has been a fabulous experience, and one that I'd like to share with you.  I'm also a bit of a history buff, and it's never been enough just to see the wrecks as they lie on the seabed.  I wanted to know more, to understand why they had to pass that way at all, and understand how they came to be lost, so here's my latest book...

Death of Ships

Most diving guides describe the wrecks as they sit on the bottom of the sea, and maybe give you a little bit of the (More or less accurate) history of the vessel, usually centred around her sinking.  Death of Ships takes the Red Sea from the earliest times and puts the wrecks into their proper historical context.

John Bantin reviewed the book for Diver and called it 'very useful'  You can find his full review here:

http://www.divernet.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?id=6419&sc=&ac=d&an=

Death of Ships, Shipwrecks of the Egyptian Red Sea

The first part fo the book tells the story of the Red Sea as a seaway from the earliest times and puts each of the wrecks into their proper context.  For example, there's a cluster of late nineteenth-century wrecks on the reefs at the far northern end of the Red Sea, just before it becomes the Gulf of Suez.  Where were they going?  Where had they come from?  And, most important of all, why?  Why did anyone need to run ships through the Red Sea in those days?  The answer, as ever, is the profit to be made in trade.  In this case, trade with India and the Far East, but it isn't quite as simple as that, and as time passes I fully expect that more wrecks from these early days of steam will come to light on reefs throughout the Red Sea, Egyptian and elsewhere.

Now fast-forward to the darkest days of the Second World War and there are two well known casualties that rest on the bottom where they were anchored to wait for onward passage through the Suez Canal.  There's been so much rubbish, and so much mis-informed hype about what were pretty standard wartime freighters, just two of literally hundreds of similar ships, that the bigger picture is easy to miss.  There are other wrecks from these days to be found lying in Egyptian  waters, and when they come to light they'll slot neatly into place in a narrative that you'll find in Death of Ships, along with much more. 

In the second part of the book each wreck is described in detail, with a suggested dive plan so that you miss nothing of interest as you explore these fascinating relics of the past.  Here, for example, is part of the entry for Thistlegorm, with a composite picture made up of over twenty individual images giving an exact plan of the wreck today:

Take Death of Ships on your next Red Sea trip and you'll have a reference to each of the wrecks described, with a plan of the wreck, plus unique diving notes and photographs.

All this for just £15, plus £2 p&p.

You'll need my email address: jmikeward@tiscali.co.uk and then click on the button below or simply go to Paypal direct

If you have any problems with this link you can order using my email address by going to Paypal and following the instructions - this sends me an automatic email which I will acknowledge, and I'll get your book in the post asap!