Henry Carter Hull

Shipbuilding and shipping have always been key elements in the life of Essex. Since the seventeenth century, the men and women of the lower Connecticut River Valley sustained maritime traditions that spanned the globe in splendid wooden sailing vessels. Their accomplishments include building the first warship of the Connecticut navy and the world's first submarine. They also served as packet ship captains, navigators and skilled crew members who crossed...

The waters, inlets and islands of Connecticut once swarmed with fabled corsairs like Captain Kidd and Blackbeard who may have buried their booty in Constitution State soil. In colonial times and through the nineteenth century, over one hundred privateers used the Connecticut River and waterways as a home port, influencing the geopolitics of the time. During the Revolutionary War, the infamous traitor Benedict Arnold attempted to destroy the state's...

Driverless cars are the future. That is what the tech giants, the auto industry and even the government want us to think. Almost daily, there are media stories about how we will soon all be able to rip up our driving licenses, sit in the back seat and let the car take us around. But, is this really going to happen? Christian Wolmar has dug behind the hype and found a very different story. We are nowhere near this driverless utopia. Indeed, it may...

All aboard for the history of one of the most audacious and innovative railroad engineering feats in history from the celebrated Floridian author.
 
Although several people had considered constructing a railroad to Key West beginning in the early 1800s, it took a bold industrialist with unparalleled vision to make it happen. In 1902, Henry Flagler made the decision to extend the Florida East Coast Railway to “the nearest...