What Is a Sea Dog?

John Jensen is an applied historian and marine archaeologist who has studied North American maritime frontier shipwrecks from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland to the edges of the Bering Sea. His more than thirty years of Great Lakes experience began with a position as an engineer/deckhand aboard the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee research vessel Neeskay and continued with many seasons surveying shipwrecks as a professional underwater archaeologist with the Wisconsin Historical Society. In addition to his early seagoing education, Jensen earned a BA in history from Lawrence University, an MA in maritime history and underwater archaeology from East Carolina University, and MS and PhD degrees in history from Carnegie Mellon University. He has been published in numerous history and academic journals, and is also the author of Stories from the Wreckage: A Great Lakes Maritime History Inspired by Shipwrecks. He lives in Pensacola, Florida.

Richard J. King is an author and illustrator. Most recently, he wrote the nonfiction books Ahab's Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby-Dick, lauded in Science, Nature, and American Scholar. He is also the author of Lobster, which was acclaimed by the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal,and The Devil's Cormorant: A Natural History, which was short-listed for the ASLE Creative Book Award and rated as one of the top five science books of 2013 by Library Journal. His current projects continue to explore the history of our relationship with marine life and the sea in a forthcoming illustrated collection of bite-sized environmental histories of ocean animals, titled An Ocean Bestiary (Chicago, 2023), and in a history of singlehanded mariners and the blue environmental movement, to be titled Sailing Alone (Penguin UK, 2024). He has been sailing on tall ships for over twenty-five years; when he is not at sea, he lives in Santa Cruz, California.