Like people, ships die in different ways. Their natural death is dismantling for scrap. This is the fate of the majority of ships that have sailed their time. But, like people, ships often fall victim to fatal circumstances - the elements of the sea, war, malicious intent, human mistakes. Since man began to master the elements of the sea, he had to know the bitterness of a shipwreck... Tragic, full of drama stories of the death of ships and people on the sea and rivers, revealed and unsolved secrets of disasters are described in the artistic and documentary book of the famous writer, marine explorer Lev Skryagin. This publication presents for the first time a chronicle of the 300 largest disasters in the history of naval and merchant shipping over the past two centuries.