Historian Nathaniel Philbrick Announced for SAIL250 Speaker Series

Norfolk, VA – August 25, 2025 – Norfolk Festevents, Ltd., and Sail250® Virginia are proud to announce that acclaimed historian Nathaniel Philbrick will be the inaugural speaker in the upcoming Sail250® Virginia Speaker Series. His talk will take place at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, October 21, 2025, at The Slover in downtown Norfolk.

Mr. Philbrick holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Brown University and a Master of Arts in American Literature from Duke University. In 1978, he became Brown’s first Intercollegiate All-American sailor and won the Sunfish North American Championship in Barrington, RI. He went on to serve as an editor at Sailing World magazine before authoring his first sailing books: The Passionate Sailor, Second Wind, and Yaahting: A Parody.

He gained national recognition in 2000 with the publication of In the Heart of the Sea, a New York Times Bestseller and winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction. The book inspired a 2015 film directed by Ron Howard, a 2001 Dateline NBC special, and the 2010 PBS American Experience documentary “Into the Deep” by Ric Burns.

Philbrick continued his exploration of maritime and American history with Sea of Glory (2003), chronicling the U.S. Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842. The book earned the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize and the Albion-Monroe Award from the National Maritime Historical Society.

His next New York Times bestseller, Mayflower, won the Massachusetts Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in History and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. In 2010, The Last Stand became a New York Times Notable Book and was honored by both the Montana Book Awards and the American Library Association. Philbrick also appeared as an on-camera consultant for the PBS film Custer’s Last Stand by Steven Ives.

In 2013 Philbrick published the New York Times bestseller, Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution, which was awarded the 2013 New England Book Award for Non-Fiction, the 2014 New England Society Book Award, and the 2014 Distinguished Book Award for the Society of Colonial Wars. His 2016 title, Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, earned the 2017 George Washington Book prize, the James P. Hanlan Book Award, and the Harry M. Ward Book Prize. In 2018, he published In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown, which was a finalist for the George Washington Book prize and the winner of the Commodore John Barry Book Award for American Maritime Literature.

Philbrick’s most recent work, Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy, was published in 2021and quickly became a New York Time Bestseller.

Sail250® Virginia is part of a nationwide series of events commemorating the semiquincentennial of the United States. In June 2026, Norfolk and the Chesapeake Bay region will host an extraordinary gathering of some of the world’s most iconic sail training, naval, and educational vessels as part of a goodwill tour of five official U.S. ports: New Orleans, Norfolk, Baltimore, New York, and Boston. Sail250® Virginia will highlight the Commonwealth’s pivotal role in America’s maritime history, the contributions of the military over 250 years, the cultural richness of the maritime community, and the historical significance of the Chesapeake Bay.

For more information about Sail250® Virginia, visit https://sail250virginia.com/. Tickets to attend the Sail250® Virginia Speaker Series are free but seats are limited, and RSVPs are required prior to the event. You can sign up to attend Nathaniel Philbrick’s October 21, 2025, lecture at https://sail250virginia.com/rsvp/philbrick.

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Wayne Creed

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