Sea story
Encyclopedia
Description
The enclosed setting of life aboard a shipShip
Since the end of the age of sail a ship has been any large buoyant marine vessel. Ships are generally distinguished from boats based on size and cargo or passenger capacity. Ships are used on lakes, seas, and rivers for a variety of activities, such as the transport of people or goods, fishing,...
allows an author to portray a social world in miniature, with characters cut off from the outside world and forced to interact in cramped and stressful conditions.
The form has been popular from Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
onwards.
Themes
Themes can include:- Interpersonal difficulties and interactions:
- Differences between seamen and officers
- Bullying behavior
- Mutiny
- Bawdy liaisons with bar-girls in exotic locales
- Inter-ship difficulties, and ship goals:
- Piracy
- Naval activity and battles
- Commercial fishing
- Boat racing
- Natural difficulties:
- Struggles against treacherous weather and sea conditions
- Shipwrecks
- Explorations of inhospitable areas
Novels
Notable exponents of the sea story include:- William CardellWilliam CardellWilliam S. Cardell was an early American fiction writer and scholar.He is best remembered for his sea stories for boys, which combined adventure tales with moral instruction. The Story of Jack Halyard, the Sailor Boy was the most famous of these; others were Jack Halyard and Ishmael Bardus and...
(1780–1828): The Story of Jack Halyard and other works - Captain Frederick MarryatFrederick MarryatCaptain Frederick Marryat was an English Royal Navy officer, novelist, and a contemporary and acquaintance of Charles Dickens, noted today as an early pioneer of the sea story...
(1792–1848): Peter Simple - Herman MelvilleHerman MelvilleHerman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
(1819–1891): Moby-DickMoby-DickMoby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,... - Joseph ConradJoseph ConradJoseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
(1857–1924): The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'The Nigger of the 'Narcissus': A Tale of the Sea is a novella by Joseph Conrad. Because of its quality compared to earlier works, some have described it as marking the start of Conrad's major period; others have placed it as the best work of his early period. John G...
, Lord JimLord JimLord Jim is a novel by Joseph Conrad originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900.An early and primary event is Jim's abandonment of a ship in distress on which he is serving as a mate...
, TyphoonTyphoon (novel)Typhoon is a novel by Joseph Conrad, begun in 1899 and serialized in Pall Mall Magazine January to March 1902. Its first book publication was in New York by Putnam in 1902 and was published in Britain in Typhoon and Other Stories by Heinemann in 1903.-Plot summary:It is a classic sea yarn that...
, The Shadow LineThe Shadow LineThe Shadow-Line is a short novel based at sea by Joseph Conrad; it is one of his later works, being written from February to December 1915. It was first published in 1916 as a serial in New York's Metropolitan Magazine in the English Review and published in book form in 1917 in the UK and America...
, The Rescue - Jack LondonJack LondonJohn Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
(1876–1916): The Sea Wolf - C. S. ForesterC. S. ForesterCecil Scott "C.S." Forester was the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith , an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of naval warfare. His most notable works were the 11-book Horatio Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic era, and The African Queen...
(1899–1966): Horatio HornblowerHoratio HornblowerHoratio Hornblower is a fictional Royal Navy officer who is the protagonist of a series of novels by C. S. Forester. He was later the subject of films and television programs.The original Hornblower tales began with the 1937 novel The Happy Return Horatio Hornblower is a fictional Royal Navy...
series - Nicholas MonsarratNicholas MonsarratCommander Nicholas John Turney Monsarrat RNVR was a British novelist known today for his sea stories, particularly The Cruel Sea and Three Corvettes , but perhaps best known internationally for his novels, The Tribe That Lost Its Head and its sequel, Richer Than All His Tribe.- Early life :Born...
(1910–1979): The Cruel Sea - Patrick O'BrianPatrick O'BrianPatrick O'Brian, CBE , born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centred on the friendship of English Naval Captain Jack Aubrey and the Irish–Catalan physician Stephen...
(1914–2000): Aubrey–Maturin seriesAubrey–Maturin seriesThe Aubrey–Maturin series is a sequence of nautical historical novels—20 completed and one unfinished—by Patrick O'Brian, set during the Napoleonic Wars and centering on the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, who is also a physician,... - Dudley PopeDudley PopeDudley Bernard Egerton Pope was a British writer of both nautical fiction and history, most notable for his Lord Ramage series of historical novels. Greatly inspired by C.S. Forester, Pope was one of the most successful authors to explore the genre of nautical fiction, often compared to Patrick...
(1925–1997): Lord RamageLord RamageNicholas, Lord Ramage was the fictional character at the centre of a series of sea novels written by Dudley Pope. Ramage was an officer in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.-Early life:...
series
Novellas
Notable novellas include:- Ernest HemingwayErnest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
(1899-1961): The Old Man and the SeaThe Old Man and the SeaThe Old Man and the Sea is a novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging fisherman who...
Periodicals
In the twentieth century, sea stories were popular subjects for the pulp magazines.Adventure
Adventure (magazine)
Adventure magazine was first published in November 1910 as a monthly pulp magazine. Adventure went on become one of the most profitable and critically acclaimed of all the American pulp magazines...
and
Blue Book
Blue Book (magazine)
Blue Book was a popular 20th-century American magazine with a lengthy 70-year run under various titles from 1905 to 1975.Launched as The Monthly Story Magazine, it was published under that title from May 1905 to August 1906 with a change to The Monthly Story Blue Book Magazine for issues from...
often ran sea stories by writers such as J. Allan Dunn
J. Allan Dunn
Joseph Allan Dunn , best known as J. Allan Dunn, was one of the high-producing writers of the American pulp magazines. He published well over a thousand stories, novels, and serials from 1914–41. He first made a name for himself in Adventure...
and H. Bedford-Jones
H. Bedford-Jones
Henry James O'Brien Bedford-Jones was a Canadian historical, adventure fantasy, science fiction, crime and Western writer who became a naturalized United States citizen in 1908. After being encouraged to try writing by his friend, writer William Wallace Cook, Bedford-Jones began writing dime...
as part of their selection of fiction.
More specialized periodicals include:
- The Ocean, one of the first specialized pulp magazinePulp magazinePulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
s (March 1907 to January 1908) - Sea Stories, a Street & SmithStreet & SmithStreet & Smith or Street & Smith Publications, Inc. was a New York City publisher specializing in inexpensive paperbacks and magazines referred to as pulp fiction and dime novels. They also published comic books and sporting yearbooks...
pulp (February 1922 to June 1930) - Sea Novel Magazine, a Frank A. Munsey pulp (2 issues, November 1940, January 1941)
- Sea Story Annual and Sea Story Anthology, 1940's Street & SmithStreet & SmithStreet & Smith or Street & Smith Publications, Inc. was a New York City publisher specializing in inexpensive paperbacks and magazines referred to as pulp fiction and dime novels. They also published comic books and sporting yearbooks...
large-size reprint pulps - Tales of the Sea, digest (Spring 1953)