Disaster

Name: Historic Shipwrecks of Coastside California
Brand: JoAnn Semones
SKU: 9781467155557
Price: 24.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Our Disaster American history book series chronicles the tragedies in history that devastated a place in the United States. Discover how the circus disaster of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus Train contributed to the demise of the circus industry. Peer into the waters of Cape Cod’s “Graveyard of Ships”, then meet the survivors of the Wyoming Blizzard of 1949. Pay tribute to the first responders who rescued campers during the 1959 Yellowstone Earthquake as well as the firefighters who battled the great Strand Theatre Fire in 1941. From vicious tornadoes to the greatest storms in the past century, these disaster books revive the voices of those lost to historical tragedies. [View all Disaster books]

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Historic Shipwrecks of Coastside California

California’s Deadliest Earthquakes

Historic Aircraft Wrecks of San Diego County

The Santa Barbara B-24 Disasters: A Chain of Tragedies Across Air, Land & Sea

Historic Aircraft Wrecks of San Bernardino County

The Great Crescenta Valley Flood: New Year's Day 1934

Historic Aircraft Wrecks of Los Angeles County

Shipwrecks of the California Coast:

Historic Shipwrecks of Coastside California

9781467155557

$24.99

The stretch of California coast from San Francisco to Monterey has seen its share of disastrous shipwrecks with devastating losses, but there are also stories of courage, innovative rescues and unique salvage operations. Uncover the tale of the adventurous, ill-fated Sir John Franklin, now marked only by a nearly forgotten cemetery, and relive the wreck of the New York, one of the most notorious ships to ever sail. Learn about the Coastside's worst maritime tragedy, when the passenger steamship San Juan was struck by the oil tanker twice her size and sank in minutes, plunging seventy-five men, women and children into the sea. Join author JoAnn Semones as she shares the stories of doomed ships that found their end along Coastside California.

California’s Deadliest Earthquakes

9781467136020

$23.99 $11.99 Save 50%

Home to hundreds of faults, California leads the nation in frequency of earthquakes every year. Despite enduring their share of the natural disasters, residents still speculate over the inevitable big one. More than three thousand people lost their lives during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Long Beach's 1933 earthquake caused a loss of nearly $50 million in damages. And the Northridge earthquake injured thousands and left a $550 million economic hit. Historian Abraham Hoffman explores the personal accounts and aftermath of California's most destructive tremors.

Historic Aircraft Wrecks of San Diego County

9781467118361

$21.99 $10.99 Save 50%

Clear weather and a natural harbor made San Diego an early aviation hub, but success in flight came with devastating tragedies. The remains of more than four hundred aircrafts lie scattered across the county's deserts and mountains. Experts estimate that dozens more are on the ocean floor off the coast. In 1922, army pilot Charles F. Webber's DeHavilland biplane went missing over Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. In 1978, Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 178 collided midair over San Diego and crashed in the residential North Park neighborhood, claiming the lives of 144 people in what was the worst airline disaster of the era. Author and aircraft accident research specialist G. Pat Macha recounts these and other stories of astonishing survival, heroism and heartbreaking fatality.

The Santa Barbara B-24 Disasters: A Chain of Tragedies Across Air, Land & Sea

9781609495718

$21.99 $10.99 Save 50%

Three separate and related tragedies occurred during and after a training run of a B-24 Liberator on July 4, 1943, over the Pacific off Santa Barbara County: The heavy bomber crashed near Santa Barbara and two of the crew were never found, another B-24 search-and-rescue crew looking for survivors off the coast never returned at all and was found later to have cashed on San Miguel Island, killing all 12 aboard, and the Air Force investigators of that accident, years later, in 1954, coming to the island in a Coast Guard cutter, hit a yacht, killing two more people. Author Robert A. Burtness takes you inside these somber stories with recorded first-hand accounts and vintage images.

Historic Aircraft Wrecks of San Bernardino County

9781626190122

$21.99 $10.99 Save 50%

Weather, darkness and twists of fate have contributed to more than three hundred airplane crashes in San Bernardino County, California. Many of these accidents occurred in the vast Mojave Desert, others on the cloud-shrouded, snow-capped mountains of the largest county in the lower forty-eight states. Searches often were labored yet fruitless, even for the privileged: Frank Sinatra's mother perished here in a downed plane. The quest for an aircraft containing $5,000 in cash has become the stuff of legend. Tales of survival in uninhabited, rugged landscapes have been especially harrowing. Join renowned aircraft-crash search specialist G. Pat Macha for dozens of sorrowful, triumphant, touching and surprising true stories of those who lived through the ordeals of plane crashes--and others who didn't.

The Great Crescenta Valley Flood: New Year's Day 1934

9781609494490

$21.99 $10.99 Save 50%

As Crescenta Valley residents gathered to ring in the 1934 New Year, a cloudburst broke over Southern California's San Gabriel Mountains, unleashing a deluge on mountainsides denuded by recent fires. A roaring wall of rocks, mud and water crashed down the canyons, uprooting trees, tossing boulders and automobiles like toys and carving a path of destruction. Using painstaking research and heart-rending firsthand accounts, historian Art Cobery paints a picture of survival and redemption in the face of natural disaster, including the heroic efforts of eleven-year-old Marcie Warfield to save her father and younger brother, the devastating debris flow that claimed the lives of refugees and aid workers at the American Legion Hall and the selfless acts of neighbors caught in the storm of events.

Historic Aircraft Wrecks of Los Angeles County

9781626195837

$21.99 $10.99 Save 50%

A century of aviation research and military flights over Los Angeles County has left the San Gabriel Mountains, Mojave Desert and the near-shore Pacific Ocean strewn with more than 1,500 aircraft crash sites. Barnstormers and test pilots too often made unexpected final landings. Accidents occurred on a nearly daily basis during World War II training maneuvers. Private planes, a sign of 1950s prosperity, also met tragic ends. These epic incidents include the 1971 tragedy of Flight 706 in which an airliner collided with a marine fighter jet above Mount Bliss, killing fifty people. Renowned aircraft crash search specialist G. Pat Macha recounts dozens of sorrowful, triumphant and surprising true stories of those who lived through these ordeals while offering touching tributes to those who did not.

Shipwrecks of the California Coast:

9781609499242

$21.99 $10.99 Save 50%

More than two thousand ships have been lost along California's 840 miles of coastline--Spanish galleons, passenger liners, freighters, schooners. Some tragedies are marking points in U.S. maritime history. The City of Rio de Janeiro," bound from Hong Kong to San Francisco in 1901, sliced the fog only to strike a rock and sink in twenty minutes, sending 128 passengers to watery graves. Seven U.S. Navy destroyers, bound on a fateful 1923 night from San Francisco to San Diego, crashed into the rocks at Honda Point on the treacherous Santa Barbara County coast, killing 23 sailors in one of the military's worst peacetime losses. Join author Michael D. White as he navigates the shoals of shipping mishaps with both salvage stories and elegies to the departed."