Nautical Books

[Patrick Murtha]

I am going to group non-fiction and fiction nautical books together, as I will with sports books also, because I think the connection is fairly tight. If one enjoys reading of the sea or sports, one will probably cross genres to do so.

And I do love the sea (but then, you’re getting used to me saying that I love everything). I have this great old bibliography, Charles Lee Lewis’s Books of the Sea, published by the US Naval Institute in 1943. Yes, I also love bibliographies. ?

Here are some titles that I have read fairly recently.

Joseph Conrad, Youth: A Narrative, and Two Other Stories (just started)
James Fenimore Cooper, The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea (Cooper’s riposte to Scott’s The Pirate)
Richard Henry Dana Jr, Two Years Before the Mast (I suggest reading this in tandem with Melville’s Redburn!)
Richard Ellis, Monsters of the Sea (fun cryptozoology)
J. Meade Falkner, Moonfleet (exciting)
James Fisher, Rockall (an entire book about this lonely peak in the mid-North Atlantic, loved it)
Isaac I. Hayes, The Open Polar Sea (interesting, although the hypothesis was incorrect)
Venyamin Kaverin, Two Captains (excellent so far)
Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History: 1660-1783 (a meaty, stimulating classic)
Herman Melville, Benito Cereno (scary, kids)
Herman Melville, Redburn: His First Voyage (excellent “starter” Melville, loose and funny)
Max Miller, I Cover the Waterfront: Stories from the San Diego Shore (fun compilation by journalist)
Alan Moorehead, The Fatal Impact (European incursions into Pacific world)
Samuel Eliot Morison, Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century (fascinating historical puzzle)
JE Nourse, American Explorations in the Ice Zones (never send a relief expedition, they’ll just get in trouble themselves and the process will repeat indefinitely)
Mike Pell, S.S. Utah (very doctrinaire proletarian fiction of the 30s)
Raymond H. Ramsay, No Longer on the Map (lost and mystery islands)
Henry Stommel, Lost Islands (same)

The Pell novel at least has an interesting photo-montage cover. But this American novel is way less subtle than anything I have ever read out of the Soviet Union, Comrade. ?

This, hmm, slightly suggestive Anchor paperback cover illustration for Redburn is by none other than Edward Gorey. “His First Voyage”, I’ll bet.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

^ That is a great perception!

As it happens, I recently received a copy of In Hazard that I ordered. I read A High Wind in Jamaica years ago and loved it.

 

[kpjayan]

Casper Jensen's 'We, the Drowned' comes to mind. There is also a great description of sea voyage in Keki Daruwalla's 'For Pepper and Christ' ( Columbus and Cabral's journey to India)

 

[Patrick Murtha]

^ These sound good! I see that I had already marked the Jensen as “Want to Read” at Goodreads, but the Daruwalla is entirely new to me.

I just checked at Scribd, and the Jensen is available there. I swear, that subscription is the best $8.99 I spend every month. If the service is available to WLF members in their countries, I highly recommend it.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

Mahan gives you lots to think about. Every page is stimulating, that’s what makes a classic. He raises considerations that I had never much thought about even as a teacher of history - for example, that a navy’s main function is not to fight wars but to protect a nation’s commercial shipping.