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Best novels or short stories set at sea

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    Best novels or short stories set at sea

    I'm reading "The Caine Mutiny" by Herman Wouk at the moment. I've only read 70 pages so far and the main character hasn't set sail yet, but I'm enjoying it so much that I want to know what people here would recommend as the best novels or short stories set at sea.

    I think the only one I can recall reading is " The North Water" by Ian McGuire. That was superb.

    #2
    Old Man and the Sea is pretty short.

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      #3
      "Call me Ishmael ..."

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        #4
        Someone on here is a fan of the Master and Commander series

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          #5
          I thought I smelled salt water....

          Okay, if you want non-fiction, my all-time favorite book is In The Heart of The Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. It's the real life account of the voyage that became Moby Dick.

          Then, go for The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas by Thor Heyerdahl. It's about a guy who builds a balsa-log raft and sails across the ocean to prove that humans migrated that way...long before we thought they could, and brought plants with them to spread agriculture. It's incredible.

          Then, The Raft by Robert Trumbull. Three WWII airmen ditch in the ocean with little more than a dinghy, a rusty pistol and a knife. (Non-fiction, of course.)

          Also, Britannia: Rowing Alone Across The Atlantic by John Fairfax is excellent.

          I've read more, so I'll keep thinking.

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            #6
            If you want to combine 'lost at sea' with 'POW', I strongly recommend Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. (Forget the movie. The book is 10/10.)

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              #7
              Herman Melville's short story Benito Cereno. Billy Budd's great, but for me this is a more powerful tale of a slave ship taken over by it's cargo. Both powerful and memorable.

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                #8
                Joseph Conrad would be a good place to start. Try Youth.

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                  #9
                  Robinson Crusoe spent a fair bit of time at sea before he was shipwrecked, but he also shipped slaves from Africa to Latin America so, you know.

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                    #10
                    Star of the sea by Joseph O' Connor ( Sineads brother) is a murder mystery set on a famine ship from Ireland to New York. Enjoyable enough.

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                      #11
                      A couple of WW2 ones written in the 50s: Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea and Alistair MacLean’s debut novel HMS Ulysses. The former is well known from the film, but the latter is a decent effort about the Baltic convoys before MacLean’s descent into (incredibly well-selling) formulaic adventure yarns.

                      Another 50s one with an existential angle: William Golding’s Pincher Martin.

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                        #12
                        Riddle of the Sands is a nautical spy novel written and set pre-WW1 - and Erskine Childers had an interesting life, and death.

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                          #13
                          Life Of Pi is somewhat ocean based...

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                            #14
                            Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                            Someone on here is a fan of the Master and Commander series
                            I certainly am, and since there are 20 finished books (and several cross-book storylines) it's a great long-term read. The first book is probably, honestly, the weakest, but it does give you an idea if you'd like the rest of the series.

                            A lot of my 'favorite' parts of the series are notably 'not' on the sea, however.

                            There is definitely a 2nd OTFer who is/was a big fan, but I'm not sure if they've made the shift to this version of the board, nor do I remember the username.

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                              #15
                              Oh, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.

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                                #16
                                Barry Unsworth Sacred Hunger
                                - brilliant novel about a Liverpool ship on the Atlantic trade route. Yes, slaves. Manages to be really inspiring at times despite the well-researched detail. Won the Booker.

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                                  #17
                                  Originally posted by Nocturnal Submission View Post
                                  Joseph Conrad would be a good place to start. Try Youth.
                                  I second Conrad, but Typhoon is my favourite. I read it for O'level with possibly the most boring teacher ever, but was gripped by it and have read it perhaps 10 times since. There's an interesting debate to be had about who the 'real' hero of the story is. Our teacher (literally) dictated his point of view that it's the first mate, but I'm convinced it's the captain.

                                  I think the fact that English was Conrad's third language comes across in much of his land-based writing, but no'one has ever, nor will ever, describe a storm at sea better than he does in this story.

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                                    #18
                                    Matthew Kneale's English Passengers is good too. He came to the Czech Rep to do readings from it in about 2002/2003.

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                                      #19
                                      It's going to sound silly, given the Conrads, Melvilles and O'Brians populating the rest of this thread, but I always enjoyed We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea by Arthur Ransome, which stood out as an unusual twist in the Swallows & Amazons series. Unlike in the usual seafaring stories, this is a low-to-the-waterline eye view: these are young protagonists who aren't hardy seadogs nor or a great ship, but instead get swept out into the North Sea in a little yacht and have to battle through with nowt but their own pluck and ingenuity.

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                                        #20
                                        Originally posted by lackedpunch View Post
                                        I think the only one I can recall reading is " The North Water" by Ian McGuire. That was superb.
                                        Saw the title and came here to mention this. Ian was one of the leaders of my creative writing seminars at university. I bought the book on sale while checking out others which had been nominated (as The North Water was) for the Booker that year, wondering where I knew the author's name from, and it only clicked afterwards.

                                        At any rate, it is fantastic, isn't it? Viscerally intense and, in parts, absolutely terrifying. I read it around the same time as I read South by Ernest Shackleton, which doesn't qualify for this thread by virtue of not being a novel or short story (while I'm here, WOM, Thor Heyerdahl's book doesn't either, for the same reason), and between the two of them they made me never want to set foot on a boat again.

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                                          #21
                                          I just received Nichts in Sicht (Nothing in Sight) by Jens Rehn, which was first published in 1954 and has been re-issued. Part of the jacket blurb: "A German submarine sailor and an American pilot are drifting in an inflatable boat on the Atlantic; the American - badly injured - dies on the third day, the German is dying of thirst: the sea shows itself unmoved and indifferent to those who are floating on its surface."

                                          Sounds good, though I doubt there's much comic relief. A significantly shorter thread would have been: 'comic novels or short stories set at sea'.

                                          In Man v Nature, a superb story in Diane Cooke's excellent short story volume of the same name, three friends on a fishing trip are stranded on a great lake in a dingy after abandoning their becalmed boat when it runs out of fuel. This is where the protagonist Ross discovers that is two mates actually hate his guts.

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                                            #22
                                            Originally posted by Sam View Post
                                            (while I'm here, WOM, Thor Heyerdahl's book doesn't either, for the same reason)
                                            <thumbs nose...>

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                                              #23
                                              Originally posted by slackster View Post
                                              Another 50s one with an existential angle: William Golding’s Pincher Martin.
                                              I quite liked that, but hated his later Rites of Passage, also set at sea.

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                                                #24
                                                I enjoyed China Mieville's "The Scar," which is mostly set at sea.

                                                I thought of a few set by the sea - Jaws; The Sea, The Sea; The Wall.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Bump...

                                                  I've just finished the superb Adrift by Steven Callahan, about his 76 days bobbing miserably across the Atlantic in a life raft in 1982, fighting starvation, dehydration, and sharks. This has easily rocketed into my top 5 of the genre - a huge favourite of mine.

                                                  Utterly unputdownable.

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