Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface: The leaving of Liverpool -- Prologue: The beginnings of its goings on -- From the purple isles of Mogador -- All the shoals and deeps within -- Oh! the beauty and the might of it -- Here the sea of pity lies -- They that occupy their business on great waters -- Change and decay all around the sea -- The storm surge carries all before -- Epilogue: Falls the shadow, fades the sea.

Until a thousand years ago, no humans ventured into the Atlantic or imagined traversing its vastness. But once the first daring mariners successfully navigated to far shores, whether it was the Vikings, the Irish, the Chinese, Christopher Columbus in the north, or the Portuguese and the Spanish in the south, the Atlantic evolved in the world's growing consciousness of itself as an enclosed body of water bounded by the Americas to the West, and by Europe and Africa to the East. This book is a biography of this immense space, of a sea which has defined and determined so much about the lives of the millions who live beside or near its tens of thousands of miles of coast. The Atlantic has been central to the ambitions of explorers, scientists and warriors, and it continues to affect our character, attitudes, and dreams. The author chronicles that relationship, making the Atlantic come vividly alive.--From publisher description.