I recently read 'A High Wind in Jamaica' by Richard Hughes. Published in 1929, it is from a completely different world. Sort of a cross between Lord of the Flies and Peter Pan, it tells the story of a group of children being evacuated to England because of a terrible hurricane in Jamaica. Their ship is set upon by pirates, who find themselves being manipulated by the children. it's full of casual violence and shocking events. I recommend.
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Best novels or short stories set at sea
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Originally posted by Vicarious Thrillseeker View PostI recently read 'A High Wind in Jamaica' by Richard Hughes. Published in 1929, it is from a completely different world. Sort of a cross between Lord of the Flies and Peter Pan, it tells the story of a group of children being evacuated to England because of a terrible hurricane in Jamaica. Their ship is set upon by pirates, who find themselves being manipulated by the children. it's full of casual violence and shocking events. I recommend.
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Sam - I was alerted to it when listening to Radio 4's 'A Good Read' - it was the choice of Meg Rosoff, who was on with Alexei Sayle. I think the episode is still available.
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Thanks, Vicarious Thrillseeker. I'll check that out at some point if I get time (not right now, as it's 4:20am and I'm going to bed as soon as I've got this week's podcast online).
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Originally posted by Sam View PostThanks, Vicarious Thrillseeker. I'll check that out at some point if I get time (not right now, as it's 4:20am and I'm going to bed as soon as I've got this week's podcast online).
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I love Conrad. Obviously his work needs to come with a hefty "may contain outdated language" warning, but the stories are great.
Cross-posting with another art form, a lot of the tales mentioned here inspired an album I absolutely love by Italian singer Vinicio Capossela, called Marinai, profeti e balene (Sailors, prophets and whales) – Billy Budd and Lord Jim both get named songs. He toured it with a stage set done up like the belly of a whale; really wish I'd got to see it live!
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Most recent in my 'lost at sea' binge is Survive The Savage Sea by Dougal Robertson. In 1972, Robertson and his family (wife, 4 kids, one friend) set out on a round-the-world sailing expedition to school their kids in the university of life. After leaving Panama, then the Galapagos Islands, their sailboat was rammed by a pod of whales and they had to survive for 38 days on a leaking raft and a tippy fiberglass dingy.
As a story, it's gripping. As a read, it's not a patch on Adrift (see previous page). It's also written so 'me me me' by Robertson, that his son eventually wrote a response book that purports to tell the whole story. (I'll be ordering that later today). But as harrowing lost-at-sea tales go, it's a good one.
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Originally posted by Various Artist View PostIt'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.
There's plenty of aquatic action in The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham but that book is more about not going to sea.
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Ahh yes I don't believe I ever actually read Peter Duck (book 3 in the S&A series), and only read Missee Lee (book 10) once – that one is set on the South China Sea, I think, and is relatively obviously fantastical, but I don't think I necessarily grasped at the time I was reading the series (aged c.11-12) just quite how 'apart' these two books are.
The other ten of the twelve novels are fairly straightforward narratives of the various childrens' 'actual' hi-jinks and adventures on lakes, Broads, and at least once the sea, but those two are something quite else aren't they? I couldn't have understood it at that age, but they seem to be meant as Ransome's narrative retellings of the children's own imagined stories of adventures afloat – metafictional creations, or "story within a story" as you say, in other words. It seems that even as a prepubescent I couldn't really be doing with all that.
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