Atlantic by Simon Winchester

If he had lived in the 18th century, Winchester could have been a buccaneer, wielding his literary sword with poetic licence. The pirate in him, quaint and quirky and delving into the most unlikely hollows of nature — sometimes centred on disaster as in his excellent volcanic Krakatoa — is evident in this study of the Atlantic, in which he uncovers a whole host of vicissitudes with which we may be familiar but to which Winchester adds his foraging touch.

Enlightened by the geography — the “pond” was shaped 190 million years ago — we are in for a rollicking voyage of the many events that have made the ocean both a lifeline through trade and infamous through slavery. Cape Coast Castle, with its “door of no return”, which was visited by a President Obama a year or so ago, is highlighted by a famous trial there which saw 54 pirates hanged from the cannons on the castle walls while African captives rescued from their slave ships by a British patrol were actually entombed in the notorious dungeons and then sent across the sea again in chains to labour in the Americas.

Of course, as Britannia rules the waves, we learn a lot about galleons and seamen like Nelson, who gave the nation unprecedented supremacy in colonial times, and the submarine battles of the Second World War (stressing the sinking of the Lusitania). But at the same time we discover more about the earlier exploration of America — almost certainly the first crossing was made by the Viking Leif Eriksson, some 500 years before Columbus’s great adventure. Winchester regales us with his personal journey as well, from the time he took a romantic trip across the Atlantic aboard one of the three White Empresses. Travelling with him is a delight, as he continues to act as a beacon shining on a saga of war, exploration, industry and settlement.