Setting Sail: Ten Thousand Years of Seafaring Adventure

Setting Sail tells the 10,000 year story of mankind's quest to cross the world's oceans. It is a remarkable saga that moves from island to island, between nations, and eventually across continents as peoples share skills and technologies that advance their sailing skills. The book accompanies a four part television program that is slated to air on Discovery Channel stations during 2004. A DVD of the television program is included with the purchase of this book.

Author Luc Cuyvers looks first into prehistory and the Polynesian diaspora that began before the Christian era. At a time when most sailors refused to venture beyond the sight of land, Polynesians were the first "bluewater" adventures, exploring the western Pacific Ocean across an area greater than twice the size of the American continent.

Setting Sail considers the advances and techniques that allowed Arab traders to pursue the first oceangoing trade routes. By 750 A.D., for example, Arab traders regularly sailed to India, Ceylon, and onward as far as China and Korea. Seven centuries later, new centers of exploration were stirring. The Chinese began to travel on voyages of discovery and Portugal's Prince Henry the Navigator sponsored the first of many voyages that would change Europe's understanding of the maritime world.

The story Setting Sail tells is fascinating and visually exciting. The text is supplemented with more than 100 color photographs of places, people, and ships that illustrate the story of ocean exploration.

Belgian author Luc Cuyvers writes and produces television documentaries about the sea. His most recent book, Into the Rising Sun: Vasco da Gama and the Search for the Sea Route to the East, was the companion book to the PBS documentary "Into the Rising Sun," which aired in 1998. He received his doctorate in marine studies from the University of Delaware and has authored six other books on marine issues.