From Ireland and the Shetlands up to Greenland, across to Baffin Island, Newfoundland, the US, and the Caribbean – prize-winning author David Gange embarks on a seabound journey through North-Atlantic coasts & islands, exploring ways of life that have been built on small rowed or paddled boats.
A true and verified story, Afloat also offers a vision of how those ways of life might inform all our futures.
Small traditional boats fulfil roles in their communities unlike any other supposedly inanimate things. Often treated as living members of the family, with minds and lives of their own, they’ve been essential to many cultures’ ways of living in the land- and seascapes that surround them.
Wherever we have statistics, small rowed and paddled boats outnumber decked ships by at least fifty to one. Yet almost all history writing is about the big boats, a strange misrepresentation of maritime history. And one this book puts right.
23 April 2026 | HB | 9780008413583 | £23.00
If you’re an independent bookseller in the UK or Ireland and you’d like a proof copy of Afloat send your request, along with your name and bookshop address, to the IndieThinking team on independentthinking@harpercollins.co.uk.