Atlantis Stories is based on the memoirs of Cape Cod boat builder Bill Cooper, who as a teenager in 1944, served aboard the Research Vessel Atlantis, the worlds largest ketch operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Cooper writes about shipboard life conducting early research on antisubmarine warfare. His cast of characters includes larger than life wartime seamen, the now elderly Scandinavian sailors from a past era who learned their trade on the hard road to Cape Horn and in the North Atlantic in wintertime, and who became his teachers in the classrooms of the wheelhouse, the focsle, and the sea-washed deck.

Editors Arthur Gaines and Jay Burnett, both seagoing scientists, add to the storys dimension with sidebars on science, technology and biography.