{"product_id":"2026200016279-secondhand-h-m-s-captain","title":"H.M.S. Captain","description":"\u003cp\u003eEdition: First Edition Thus\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Fair\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Wear and tear with damage\u003cbr\u003ePages: Tanning and foxing\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the annals of Victorian naval disaster, few tragedies are as haunting or as preventable as the capsizing of HMS Captain — a story of hubris, innovation, and catastrophic failure that Arthur Hawkey masterfully chronicles in this gripping historical account. On the night of 7 September 1870, one of the Royal Navy's most controversial warships — a low-freeboard, turret-rigged ironclad — rolled over in a gale off Cape Finisterre, taking nearly 500 men to their deaths in one of Britain's worst peacetime naval disasters. At the heart of the tragedy was Captain Cowper Coles, a brilliant but obstinate inventor who had championed the revolutionary design against the warnings of the Admiralty's own naval architects, ultimately paying for his conviction with his life.\n\nHawkey presents a meticulously researched narrative that illuminates the fierce tensions between visionary ambition and institutional caution in the age of iron and steam. Drawing on official inquiries, personal correspondence, and contemporary accounts, the author reconstructs not just the disaster itself but the political and engineering controversies that made it inevitable. Written with the authority of careful scholarship and the pace of a sea thriller, H.M.S. Captain stands as a compelling meditation on the price of pride — and leaves the reader wondering how many other monuments to human certainty lie waiting on the ocean floor.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49336816664795,"sku":"2026200016279-SECONDHAND","price":40.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/c29d41d2-a62a-47b8-96fa-96c1a3005c8d.png?v=1789958716","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200016279-secondhand-h-m-s-captain","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}