SEA STORIES ARE, PLAIN AND SIMPLE, WONDERFUL SPRINGBOARDS FOR VICARIOUS ADVENTURE.
There is nothing like a sea story to entertain, thrill, move, shock, or inspire a reader, and this collection will do just that.
What is it about the sea that lends itself to so many indelibly classic stories? The sea is a wonderful stage on which to unroll a dramatic narrative or introduce a heroic character. It’s no wonder so many masterpieces are set on the seas of the world.
From sublime moments gunkholing with Erskine Childers in “An Introduction to Informality” to sheer terror with the ill-fated men among sharks in Raymond B. Lech “The Loss of the Indianapolis” to astounding respect for the endurance of Ernest Shackleton and his storm-tossed men in “Escape from the Ice,” there is simply nothing that can compare to what awaits in this collection of twenty-eight thrilling stories. Many, having withstood the test of time and the vagaries of popular culture are classics Classic or not, the stories in this collection are good reading--breathtaking, and entertaining. They offer unexpected pleasures.
You’ll soon find there is much surviving among these stories. What internal chemistry is required to spend five days drifting in the Pacific under a broiling sun while shipmates floating beside you are ripped apart by sharks? How does one maintain any sort of sanity? What degree of strength is needed to live for seventy days in a small boat as you watch your boatmates voluntarily drop into the sea to end it all? For that matter, at what point does one decide not to mourn over the body of a crewmate but rather to eat him?
For anyone sitting adrift in a small, fragile boat while a ship sinks rapidly nearby, the prospect of what lies ahead can hold only terror. Everyone who has experienced this has been afraid. In these stories, those who controlled their fear—the stronger ones who somehow used it to motivate themselves—made it to shore. Those who were overcome by fear soon enough perished.
The stories in this collection will provide a master class for readers seeking to understand the singular psychic strength that can persist under the direst of conditions. On a simpler level, these tales offer an astounding look at how one can stare down death and survive—with courage and strength and amazing patience. There is among the survivors a certain arrogance toward death.
These tales are a resounding affirmation of the power of hope.
There is much more to this collection than mere survival. Here is history, and drama, intrigue, well-paced tales, and colorful characters—all available to enjoy as you sit back in the comfort of a warm and cozy (and I hope, dry) reading chair anchored to your living room floor.
That’s the magic of a good sea story tale and why some of the best writers chose the sea as a backdrop.
The accounts in this collection are stronger and more dramatic for their total lack of affectation, their frankness, and their absence of ego.
The stories here are frank and–one must admit—inspiring stories of adventure from authors who by luck, more often than not, bad luck, found themselves at sea, alone on a boat in devastating circumstances.
Read the first person accounts of William Lay and Cyrus M. Hussey on board the ship Globe out of Nantucket, who witnessed the bloody carnage of a mutiny. Or perhaps Lewis Holmes’s account of a whaler’s frozen voyage. Or Owen Chase’s understated but eloquent tale of survival.
Here also are giants among authors, not only of seafaring classics but of literature, Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson. Joseph Conrad, James Fenimore Cooper, Jack London--who celebrated the uniqueness of the American character so eloquently that their writing has never faded from public view. But here also are other writers who produced hidden jewels that simply slipped away quietly. It’s time to revive them all.
Few people would want to test their mettle in an ice-encrusted boat with Ernest Shackleton, sail the Straits of Magellan with Joshua Slocum, or watch with Owen Chase as an angry whale sends his ship to the bottom thousands of miles from the nearest land.
That is why it is best to simply read about them.
“The Capture,” by Aaron Smith is a true account of the author’s abduction by Cuban pirates while en route from Jamaica to England in 1822. Smith subsequently gained his freedom, but his bad karma continued when he was later arrested as a pirate in Havana, returned to England in chains, and put on trial for his life.
Another first-hand account of the travails of life at sea is Owen Chase’s chilling retelling of watching his whaler, the Essex out of Nantucket, being rammed by a white whale and sunk. Chase was only one of eight crew to survive an ordeal that included spending ninety three days adrift in a whaleboat after the ship was sunk. Chase’s 1821 narrative inspired Melville to write Moby Dick, a portion of which appears here. Of Chase’s story Melville wrote, “The reading of this wondrous story upon the landless sea, and very close to the latitude of the shipwreck has a surprising effect on me.” Melville, the icon, appears here also with “Rounding Cape Horn,” from his 1850 work, White-Jacket. Melville’s contemporary Richard Henry Dana presents an interesting glimpse into the highly superstitious life of a sailor in “Loss of a Man—Superstition,” from Two Years Before the Mast.
No collection of sea stories, classic or not, would be complete without Joseph Conrad. “Dirty Weather,” from Typhoon, contains the requisite storm, but Conrad’s portrayal of Captain MacWhirr is masterful and rich and unforgettable.
It is impossible to read Erskine Childers’s 1903 novel The Riddle of the Sands and not want to chuck it all, find a small boat, and go gunkholing for months on end. “An Introduction to Informality,” in which the stiff, vain, excessively formal Curutthers meets up with his unglamorous acquaintance Arthur Davies, is taken from The Riddle, a book The Irish Times called “one of the most famous of all thrillers and one of the best of all sea stories.” It was the only work of fiction Childers produced. Turning his attention to the vast difficulties of Irish politics and independence, Childers was executed by the British in 1922.
Joshua Slocum, who at one point commanded some of the finest tall ships of his era, became in 1898 the first man to sail around the world single-handedly, in his small sloop Spray—a 46,000mile trip he began three years earlier at age 51. “Yammerschooner” is taken from his incomparable Sailing Alone Around the World.
What can one say about legendary Sir Ernest Shackleton? Leader of perhaps the greatest, or at least the most remarkable survival feats ever, Shackleton was an unflappable character whose story would be deemed unbelievable if it had been presented as fiction. “Escape from the Ice” is taken from his account, South.
Three Men in a Boat, from which “Mal de Mer” is excerpted, is considered British writer Jerome K. Jerome’s great comic masterpiece. Though humor rarely travels or ages well, Three Men in a Boat is, more than one hundred years after Jerome wrote it, still funny.
It might strike some as unusual to see a piece by James Fenimore Cooper—an author better known for the landlocked Natty Bumpo and The Last of the Mohicans, in a collection of sea stories. But Cooper was a longtime aficionado of the American Navy. His account of the early days of the USS Constitution appears in “Young Ironsides.”
I hope readers find this collection broad, balanced, and interesting.