By day, I'm a domestic violence prosecutor. By night, I read romance to restore my faith in love, relationships, and humanity in general.
My father-in-law gave me this back in 2005 or 2006, and I loved it. It's a fascinating account of what went wrong in five major tall ships disasters over the course of the last century. (The movie White Squall is loosely based on the loss of the Albatross.) After this, my father-in-law and I have been swapping books on nautical history for the last few years: it's good to have a shared interest.
UPDATE April 2014: It appears that the South Korean ferry disaster was probably caused by the same thing that caused the ship disasters studied in this book: cargo shifted, causing the boat to tilt and fill with water, causing it to capsize and sink. God rest those souls.
*** Originally posted on GR December 2011.***