A maritime historian from Whitefield has been awarded the 2005 United States Maritime Literature Award for “Sea Struck,” a book about the final decades of America’s square-rigged sailing vessels.

W.H. Bunting shares the award with his publisher, Tilbury House of Gardiner. “Sea Struck” is based on the first-hand accounts of three privileged young men from Massachusetts who went to sea in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The New Bedford Whaling Museum and the Martha’s Vineyard Historical Society collaborated in the project.