Admiral of the Ocean Sea

Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison’s classic biography of the greatest sailor of them all, Christopher Columbus, written with the insight, energy, and authority that only someone who has sailed in Columbus’s path to the New World could muster.

Morison undertook this expedition in a 147-foot schooner and a 47-foot ketch, the dimensions of these craft roughly matching those of Columbus’s Santa Maria and Nina. The result is this vivid and definitive biography that accurately details the voyages that, for better or worse, changed the world.

Samuel Eliot Morison, Rear Admiral, United States Naval Reserve, was an American historian noted for his works of history, especially maritime history, that were both authoritative and highly readable. At various times he held teaching positions at Berkeley, Oxford, and Harvard. A sailor as well as a scholar, he garnered numerous literary prizes, military honors, and national awards from both foreign countries and United States, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Winner of the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Biography