Saturday, May 21st, 2:00-4:00 p.m.

Mark Lardas joins us Saturday with his history of Texas shipwrecks.

The Texas coastline and offshore waters are flat, shallow, featureless, and filled with shoals. Texas waters are subjected to extreme weather, not just hurricanes and tropical storms but also northers and seasonal gales. This, combined with two centuries of naval warfare off Texas waters, produced many shipwrecks of all sorts, from Spanish treasure fleets to simple working boats. The ships of pirates, navies, cotton traders, immigrants, fishermen, and oil shippers line the Texas coast, cover the sea bottom off Texas, and blanket the bottom of Texas rivers. Each wreck has a story, romantic or repellent, prosaic or unusual, but all intriguing.

Mark Lardas has written numerous books on maritime and Texas history and is a frequent contributor of book reviews to the Galveston Daily News. With generous assistance from, and cooperation with, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University and many museums around the state, Mr. Lardas has assembled a fascinating collection of images to illustrate the state’s rich maritime history as seen through its shipwrecks.