<p>For all its romance, the tall-ship renaissance has a tragic side. Working from official documents, survivor and expert interviews, and his own tall-ship experience, Parrott re-creates the losses of five sail-training vessels: the 316-foot <i>Pamir </i>(1957), 117-foot <i>Albatross </i>(1961), 117-foot <i>Marques </i>(1984), 137-foot <i>Pride of Baltimore </i>(1986), and 125-foot <i>Maria Asumpta </i>(1995). He vividly re-creates each final voyage and then explores the roles played by ship stability, structural integrity, weather, human error, and standards of risk in tragedies at sea.</p>