Many fascinating books already mentioned, but here are some more:
- The Cape Horn Breed, by William H.S. Jones, Master Mariner, who was a cadet on the ship here. The period is 1905, if I remember, a year when many, many ships were lost trying to make it around the Horn. The ship here lost one man, who fell from a yard into wild seas, and of course the ship couldn’t do anything to pick him up. A great part of the book talks about one Nathan Flint, bucko mate, a New Englander on a British ship, a competent “giant” but a very hard, mean guy who hated liverpool dock rats. Some years after reading this, I found mention of the captain in a book by Alan Villiers, who didn’t have much regard for the skipper of this ship, nor much regard for British square riggers, which were usually flush deck ships that were dangerous for seamen leaving their focs’ls in heavy seas. Villiers thought the French and German ships were better–and better captained and crewed.
- OF WHALES AND MEN, by R.R. Robertson. True story, like the above. A Scottish doctor makes a season in the 1950s in the south Atlantic on a Norwegian factory ship. Some of the oddest characters you’ll ever read about, such as Mansell, who seemed to speak all languages and know about everything, but whose real identity and origins forever remained a secret. Or the master bridge player and the best flenser, who never spoke to anyone (no one knew his name) and who remained all the time in his cabin until time to flense. Sailors with Thordahl A/S, the Norwegian whaleship company, maintain a very interesting website. They have a club, called the “hvalgrabbers” club. (Site is in Norwegian, though)
- The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck, by B. Trevelyan (spelling, anyone?). This was made into a black and white movie. Great reading, great photos.
- The Voyage of the Armada: The Spanish Story, the Spanish Story, by David Howarth. Nonfiction. From the Spanish point of view, required reading.
- Yankee Whalers in the South Seas, by A.B.C. Whipple. Nonfiction, a totally enthalling account of an era.
- The Log of the Skipper’s Wife, by James W. Balano. Nonfiction. The author is the son of the woman who kept the log, here, as she traveled around the world with her husband on one of the last of the Maine windjammers.
- Looking for a Ship, by John McPhee. Required reading. I assume many of those looking into this site have read this book.
- The Moonrakers, by Robert Carse. Nonfiction.
- Yankee Surveyors in the Shogun’s Seas, Records of the United States Surveying Expedition to the North Pacific Ocean, 1853-1856, editor, Allan B. Cole.
- A Deckboy’s Diary, by John Richardson. British freighters in the 1950’s. More required reading.
- Passage, From Sail to Steam, by Captain L.R.W. Beavis. Large format, fascinating accounts and great photos.
- This Was Seafaring, a Sea Chest of Salty Memories, by Ralph W. Andrews and Harry A. Kirwin. Kirwin is the great Pacific Northwest photographer, so you can guess what this book looks like.
- Under Full Sail, by Morris Rosenfeld. Great black and white photos of yachts and sailing ships. Probably a very hard to find book.
- Dangerous Voyage (in paperback–original title was Williwaw), by Gore Vidal, who was himself in the Navy in the Aleutians. This was his first novel but there’s nothing fake, here.
- Voyage, a Novel of 1896, by Sterling Hayden.
Here is true masterpiece of fiction, by the mysterious B. Traven
(author of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, etc) The Death Ship. said to be “the Moby Dick of the stokehold.” If you never read anything else, here, read this!
And here is another must-have for a collector. My wife was an editor of this book. Ferryboats: A legend on Puget Sound, by M.S. Kline and G.A. Bayless. It was first published in 1983 and might be a rather expensive book, now, I’m not sure.