'No cure, no pay'- those are the terms under which a salvor operates, and in doing so he takes on an onerous responsibility. If he is defeated by the elements he is not paid. He receives nothing, however much money, effort, sweat and tears he has put in. Salvage is not a business for the faint-hearted. Ian Tew joined Selco Salvage of Singapore in 1974, and spent over a decade on the front line. Already an experienced master mariner, he learnt the salvage trade in the busy waters of the Far East before rising to command some of the world's largest supertugs, eventually becoming a roving salvage master. In his odyssey he roamed the world, from the coast of Cornwall to the Southern Ocean, from the Gulf of Suez to the dangerous reefs of the South China Sea. This is a vivid account of those ten tough years - successes, failures, tows and rescues - a barge adrift in a hurricane in the English Channel - a freighter aground on a reef hundreds of miles from land with a tropical storm approaching - a trawler battered by the surf on a coral reef, its bottom ripped out - a tanker hit by a missile in the Gulf during the 'Tanker War' of the 1980s. The tugs themselves play a big part in the story, as do the crews and captains the author worked with. This gripping account of drama at sea is a tribute to the seamanship, courage and resourcefulness of the salvor, and an insight into the technical, commercial and human issues behind the headlines.

Michigan Salvage is the first scholarly collection on celebrated writer Bonnie Jo Campbell, the author of two novels and three short story collections, including National Book Award finalist American Salvage (2009). Her writing captures a diverse and bustling rural America, brimming with complex characters who struggle with addiction, poverty, and land degradation—issues that have become, undeniably, part of the southwestern Michigan landscape that she calls home. The essays in this volume demonstrate many rich ways to approach Campbell’s writing, from historical and cultural overviews to essays examining the class and gender implications of her stories and novels, to teaching essays highlighting how to use her work in the classroom and beyond. Along with each essay, Michigan Salvage also features lesson plans and writing prompts meant to spark discussion and encourage further investigation into these stories and novels. This essential and teachable collection makes plain Campbell’s contributions to contemporary American literature.

A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. He's a hard drinker, largely absent, and it isn't often he worries about the family. Esch and her three brothers are stocking up on food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; at fifteen, she has just realized that she's pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pit bull's new litter, dying one by one. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting. As the twelve days that make up the novel's framework yield to a dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family - motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce - pulls itself up to face another day.

Skinheads. Drug dealers. Cops. For two brothers-of-circumstance navigating the violent streets of this industrial wasteland, every urban tribe is a potential threat. Yet it is amongst the denizens of these unforgiving alleys, dangerous squat houses, and underground nightclubs that the brothers - and the small street tribe to which they belong - forge the bonds that will see them through senseless minor cruelties, the slow and constant grind of poverty, and savage boot culture violence. Friendship. Understanding. Affinity. For two brothers, these fragile ties are the only hope they have for salvation in the wake of a mutual girlfriend's suicide, an event so devastating that it drives one to seek solace far from his steel city roots, and the other to a tragic - yet miraculous - transformation, a heartbreaking metamorphosis from poet and musician to street prophet, emerging from a self-imposed cocoon an urban shaman, mad-eyed shaper of (t)ruthless reality. What We Salvage is a reckless, gritty, and unapologetic journey, a novel that seizes the poignant fragility of Catcher in the Rye and throws it into a merciless world reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange. It is a work that author James Morrow dubbed "postmodern punk," a term that befits Baillie's poetry-as-street-prose style.

When the 236-metre long container ship Rena ploughed into and was impaled upon the Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga at 2.20am on 5 October 2011, it began one of the biggest salvage operations and environmental disasters in New Zealand history. The Rena was carrying 1368 containers, 1700 tonnes of heavy fuel oil and 200 tonnes of marine diesel, all of which threatened to enter the sea. Salvors worked round the clock to stem the black tide and thousands of New Zealanders volunteered to clean up beaches and rescue wildlife. In Black Tide John Julian investigates the real story behind the Rena catastrophe and attempts to answer the many questions surrounding the disaster. What really happened on that fateful night and why did the Rena run aground? Who is responsible? What could be done better and faster? And, importantly, is New Zealand able to effectively respond to maritime disasters? The Rena?s circumstances are complicated ? built in Germany, registered in Liberia, insured in Sweden and reinsured in England, owned by a Greek company, chartered to a Swiss group and crewed by Filipinos ? and the story of the shipwreck is no less fraught. Black Tide looks for information amid the flotsam and jetsam and addresses the most important question of all: what can be done to stop this happening again? When the 236-metre long container ship Rena ploughed into and was impaled upon the Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga at 2.20am on 5 October 2011, it began one of the biggest salvage operations and environmental disasters in New Zealand history. The Rena was carrying 1368 containers, 1700 tonnes of heavy fuel oil and 200 tonnes of marine diesel, all of which threatened to enter the sea. Salvors worked round the clock to stem the black tide and thousands of New Zealanders volunteered to clean up beaches and rescue wildlife. In Black Tide John Julian investigates the real story behind the Rena catastrophe and attempts to answer the many questions surrounding the disaster. What really happened on that fateful night and why did the Rena run aground? Who is responsible? What could be done better and faster? And, importantly, is New Zealand able to effectively respond to maritime disasters? The Rena?s circumstances are complicated ? built in Germany, registered in Liberia, insured in Sweden and reinsured in England, owned by a Greek company, chartered to a Swiss group and crewed by Filipinos ? and the story of the shipwreck is no less fraught. Black Tide looks for information amid the flotsam and jetsam and addresses the most important question of all: what can be done to stop this happening again?

This new history of the Royal Navy, published to coincide with the Golden Jubilee of the White Ensign Association, is a full and exciting account of all the many campaigns, operations and deployments conducted around the world from the Cold War and the Cod Wars to the Falklands War and the Gulf Wars. It has been written and compiled from privileged access to secret and confidential Admiralty Plans and Commanding Officers' reports and contains a wealth of previously unpublished material. The story of how the Royal Navy has adapted to meet the many new challenges of the modern world and how it has carried out its vital roles from manning the nation's strategic nuclear deterrent to guarding the vital offshore oil and gas facilities as well as protecting Britain's worldwide interests is a truly fascinating one, while the development of ships, submarines, aircraft, weapons, tactics and strategies as well as the changes in personnel and life at sea are brought to life by contributions from people who served over the period. Profusely illustrated throughout with many previously unpublished photographs and paintings, this beautifully-produced volume is a magnificent golden jubilee tribute to the Royal Navy.

This is the story of an extraordinary boat journey that two men made for the fun of it. They rowed and sailed through pack ice, past glaciers and icebergs. They survived whales, polar bears, starvation and capsize. In doing so, they completed the first circumnavigation of the Arctic Island of Spitsbergen in an open rowing boat. Along the way they learned about themselves and about life, experienced a frozen wilderness that will most likely disappear before the century is out. This is a story for small-boat sailors, for lovers of ice and snow, and for anybody who wanted to run away to sea.

'My living was made on the sea, my greatest pleasures have been sailing on the sea, my inspiration has come from the sea, the very reason to live has been the sea...' By the age of seven, Ian Tew had learnt to sail and by his eighth birthday he became the owner of "Titwillow", a yellow sailing dinghy. It marked the beginning of what was to be a life at sea. After attending the Pangbourne Nautical College, which was an ominous experience, Ian left his seafaring family to join British India Steam Navigation as a cadet. He was assigned to a ship on the East African run and then, in 1962, he flew to Bombay on his first flight as an officer in training to join the infamous deck passenger ship the 'Dara'. The tragedy that followed was the biggest peacetime disaster to strike a British ship since the Titanic. Following survival leave, Captain Tew was sent to Calcutta, where he spent two months in hospital drifting in and out of a coma from fever. An East African voyage was next and it would be two years before a return to England was on the horizon. As a young officer in the British Merchant Navy, Ian progressed in his career and went on to become a prominent Salvage Master - joining Selco Salvage of Singapore in 1974. He navigated the busy waters of the Middle and Far East, salved vessels from the shores of the UK to the Japanese Coast, was arrested in Massawa Ethiopia during the war with Eritrea, culminating with the Iran Iraq War. Ian Tew's story, recounted while stranded in Tahiti, provides a fascinating insight into a life of voyage and discovery, of expert seamanship, salvage and courage. Life may often be dangerous at sea, but it is seldom dull. Captain Ian Tew lives in Milford on Sea. He is the author of the novel 'The Dare', a collection of stories 'Reflections On The Sea' as well as the memoirs 'Sailing in My Grandfather's Wake' and 'Salvage: A Personal Odyssey'. Praise for Captain Ian Tew: "True stories of the sea, told by those whose stories they are: Here is action and adventure, passion and drama, storms and calms; it all makes for stirring reading." Wilbur Smith "Authentic and gripping. A fine collection of stories." Richard Foreman

Now in its first American edition, Dionne Brand’s groundbreaking A Map to the Door of No Return has emerged as a modern classic, a highly influential exploration of “being” in the Black Diaspora. Since its first publication in 2001, Dionne Brand’s groundbreaking exploration of being in the Black Diaspora, A Map to the Door of No Return, has emerged as a modern classic. The door, in Brand’s iconic schema, represents the point of rupture where the ancestors of the Black Diaspora departed one world for another: the place where all names were forgotten, and all beginnings recast. “This door,” writes Brand, “is not mere physicality. It is a spiritual location . . . Since leaving was never voluntary, return was, and still may be, an intention, however deeply buried. There is as it says no way in; no return.” Through shards of history, memoir, lyrical investigation, and the unwritten experience of so many descendants of those who passed through the door, Brand constructs a map of this indelible region, culminating in an enduring expression, both definitive and seeking, of what it is to live, think, and create in the wake of colonization. With a new preface by the author, and an afterword by Saidiya Hartman.