101 Best Sea Books
From Bookmarks Magazine:
Storytelling is intrinsic to the sea. Ever since man learned to sail long distances, he has amused himself and his fellow crew by telling stories. Or, as John McPhee writes in his book Looking for a Ship: " All through a voyage while nothing happens, sailors tell stories about things that happen."
Life at sea can be tedious and the hours lonely, but things do happen. Just ask Odysseus or the Ancient Mariner, or Cook or Ahab, or Hornblower or Queeg. Since time immemorial, young men have gone to sea to prove themselves, fallen men to escape their troubles, ambitious men to discover new lands or to make fortunes or to gain fame by setting new records of distance and speed. Since time immemorial, men have also gone to sea to fight. And while it may be true, as Joseph Conrad says, that the ocean is a brute that has "no compassion, no faith, no law, no memory," it has been exceedingly generous in one way: sailors and their chroniclers have recorded and conjured up a singular body of literature upon its waves.
This body of work spans three millennia, covers a fascinating swath of history, and includes some of the towering works in the English language. From Moby-Dick to Jaws, from Scylla and Charybdis to the perfect storm, from the Pequod to the Titanic, sea literature defines danger for us. In the voyages of Cook, Dana, Riley, Shackleton, Heyerdahl, and Slocum, it takes us on adventures to the boundaries of our globe. And in the strange unhingings of Ahab, Queeg, and Crowhurst, it allows us to see the outer limits of the inner mind.
It was Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, a roman-fleuve of the Age of Nelson only completed in recent years, that rekindled my passion for sea literature, which had been suckled by Homer and Hermann Melville and Conrad. In the wood-paneled library of the New York Yacht Club, for days on end, sailors' stories enveloped me. I could crack open a book and soon find myself on frozen shrouds fighting an angry storm off Cape Horn, shipwrecked on the uncharted Saharan coast, in the midst of an epic sea battle, whaling, pirating, treasure hunting, or trading with natives in the South Seas.
Storytelling is intrinsic to the sea. Ever since man learned to sail long distances, he has amused himself and his fellow crew by telling stories. Or, as John McPhee writes in his book Looking for a Ship: " All through a voyage while nothing happens, sailors tell stories about things that happen."
Life at sea can be tedious and the hours lonely, but things do happen. Just ask Odysseus or the Ancient Mariner, or Cook or Ahab, or Hornblower or Queeg. Since time immemorial, young men have gone to sea to prove themselves, fallen men to escape their troubles, ambitious men to discover new lands or to make fortunes or to gain fame by setting new records of distance and speed. Since time immemorial, men have also gone to sea to fight. And while it may be true, as Joseph Conrad says, that the ocean is a brute that has "no compassion, no faith, no law, no memory," it has been exceedingly generous in one way: sailors and their chroniclers have recorded and conjured up a singular body of literature upon its waves.
This body of work spans three millennia, covers a fascinating swath of history, and includes some of the towering works in the English language. From Moby-Dick to Jaws, from Scylla and Charybdis to the perfect storm, from the Pequod to the Titanic, sea literature defines danger for us. In the voyages of Cook, Dana, Riley, Shackleton, Heyerdahl, and Slocum, it takes us on adventures to the boundaries of our globe. And in the strange unhingings of Ahab, Queeg, and Crowhurst, it allows us to see the outer limits of the inner mind.
It was Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, a roman-fleuve of the Age of Nelson only completed in recent years, that rekindled my passion for sea literature, which had been suckled by Homer and Hermann Melville and Conrad. In the wood-paneled library of the New York Yacht Club, for days on end, sailors' stories enveloped me. I could crack open a book and soon find myself on frozen shrouds fighting an angry storm off Cape Horn, shipwrecked on the uncharted Saharan coast, in the midst of an epic sea battle, whaling, pirating, treasure hunting, or trading with natives in the South Seas.
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