Recurring | Free
Join the South Street Seaport Museum for the recurring maritime-themed book club! Seaport Museum staff and special guests will stir up lively discussions informed by our shared love of literature, history, and preservation. Literary selections will be announced at least one month in advance. You can find information on upcoming book selections below.
The event is free. Preregistration is encouraged. You don’t have to read the full selection to enjoy the event; everyone is welcome!
Saturday February 28, 12pm: Written in the Waters A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging by Tara Roberts
When Tara Roberts first caught sight of a photograph at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History depicting the scuba and underwater archaeology group Diving With a Purpose, it called out to her. Here were Black women and men strapping on masks, fins, and tanks to explore Atlantic Ocean waters along the coastlines of Africa, North America, and Central America, seeking the wrecks of slave ships long lost in time. Inspired, Roberts joined them—and started on a path of discovery more challenging and personal than she could ever have imagined.
For Black History Month, the book club will read this lush and lyrical memoir that tells a story of exploration and reckoning that takes Roberts from her home in Washington, D.C., to an exotic array of locales. The journey connects her with other divers, scholars, and archaeologists, offering a unique way of understanding the 12.5 million souls carried away from their African homeland to enslavement on other continents. But for Roberts, the journey is also intensely personal. Inspired by the descendants of those who lost their lives during the Middle Passage, she decides to plumb her own family history and life as a Black woman to help make sense of her own identity.
Sign up below to join the book club and talk through this book with Museum staff and fellow readers.
Enjoy More That the Museum Offers
Access to the historic ships and exhibitions on view is not included with your ticket to this event. If you would like to explore more that the Museum has to offer, book in advance or ask Museum staff about General Admission tickets when you check in.
General Admission is available Friday through Sunday, from 11am to 5pm and brings you aboard the 1885 tall ship Wavertree and 1908 lightship Ambrose at Pier 16, and into all current exhibitions on view in the first-floor Schermerhorn Row galleries at 12 Fulton Street. Your ticket also sets you on course to explore Maritime City, the Seaport Museum’s immersive, three-floor exhibition at A.A. Thomson & Co., located at 213 Water Street.
Previous Book Club Picks
October 2025: Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night by Julian Sancton
August 2025: The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura
June 2025: The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss by Margalit Fox
April 2025: When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age by Justin Kaplan
March 2025: Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City by Lucy Sante
February 2025: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
January 2025: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
November 2024: Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquin People of New York by Evan T. Pritchard
October 2024: The Witch of New York: The Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice by Alex Hortis
August 2024: The Waterworks by E. L. Doctorow
July 2024: Remarkable Creatures: A Novel by Tracy Chevalier
April 2024: Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip
March 2024: The Mad Girls of New York: A Nellie Bly Novel by Maya Rodale
February 2024: Here is New York by E. B. White
January 2024: Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel
November 2023: Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
October 2023: Nothing Else But Miracles by Kate Albus
September 2023: Manhattan Beach: A Novel by Jennifer Egan
June 2023: The Engineer’s Wife: A Novel of the Brooklyn Bridge by Tracey Enerson Wood
March 2023: The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell by Mark Kurlansky
February 2023: Soldier, Sailor, Spy: The Story of a Black American Loyalist by Charles Hoffmire
January 2023: Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan
October 2022: Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell
September 2022: Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boat Lift by Jessica DuLong
August 2022: Dactyl Hill Squad by Daniel José Older
July 2022: The Lost Endeavour by John Masefield
Ready for more?
Head over to our Programs and Events page to see what else is happening at the Museum. Sign up for an upcoming talk, learn more about visiting Wavertree, or explore our virtual offerings.