Books published by Lodestar Books

In a post-exploration world, two relatively ordinary blokes, serving Royal Marines, decided they wanted an extraordinary 21st century adventure. In this refreshingly honest account they re-live the highs and lows of sailing and rowing a tiny open boat, completely unsupported, through one of the most iconic wilderness waterways on the planet - the Northwest Passage across the top of Canada. They describe battling with an Arctic storm miles from land and being caught in the worst sea ice for more than a decade. At one point they are forced to drag Arctic Mariner, their seventeen-foot boat, across ten miles of broken pack ice to reach open water. Their story is enriched by the Inuit people and the incredible wildlife they met along the way, including all-too-close encounters with both grizzly and polar bears. And they relate with honesty how the isolation and stresses of the high Arctic shaped the bond between their two very different personalities. This is neither an expose of global warming, nor a detailed study of Inuit culture. It is not particularly long on the historical quest for the Northwest Passage. It is quite simply the tale of two blokes, up north. b/w photographs, maps, drawings

Ben Lowings examines David Lewis's lifetime of adventure forensically yet sympathetically, to comprehend his determination. Lewis's achievements garnered him awards and honours, but their price had ultimately to be paid by the succession of families he created, then broke apart. We may legitimately ask 'was it really all worth it?'

In his lone six-year voyage from England to New Zealand in the 1950s, in a 1908 yawl designed by Albert Strange, the author discovers both the world and himself.

This book is a conversation with the past, conducted in a very old, engineless gaff cutter, armed with the Admiralty Pilot, a gallant crew, and a sense of the ridiculous.

Gloria Wilson documents the Peterhead yard of Richard Irvin & Sons, and the wooden craft for which it became renowned. Some one hundred of her photographs accompany her account of the boats and the people who made up a distinctive and now disappearing maritime culture.

In "Good Little Ship" Peter Willis analyses a classic of maritime literature - Arthur Ransome's "We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea" - and tells the story of the "Nancy Blackett", Ransome's own boat which appears as the "Goblin" in his story, and survives today as an ambassador for Ransome and his tales.

The improbable, yet true, and highly readable story of a Hull steam trawler, her industry, and her people, from her launch in 1906, through fishing, wars, sealing, whaling and exploration, to her final resting place on the edge of the Antarctic.

Martin O'Scannall's engaging account of his forty-year affair with a modest but beautiful Edwardian gaffer, from her acquisition, through her restoration, and on to voyages throughout the British Isles and mainland Europe.