It's a remarkable fact that something like 350 quintillion gallons of water (that's 350 followed by 18 zeroes) are roiling and sloshing around in the world's oceans -- a number so ridiculously huge that none of us can really grasp it.
It's no wonder, then, that the sea remains a place physically, psychologically, and culturally apart from the realm of landlubbers -- an apartness that has inspired countless maritime novels, short stories, folk tales, poems, nonfiction thrillers, legends, and myths down through the ages.
Here, on National Maritime Day (May 22), we're highlighting a number of books about the sea that have long been hailed as classics, or are relatively new and likely to endure as classics in their own right.
Anchors a-weigh!
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Moby-Dick: In 1923, the English author D. H. Lawrence pronounced Herman Melville's 1851 masterpiece “one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world.” He was right. But he could have added that Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (its full and proper title) is also confounding, gorgeous, and (at times) surprisingly humorous. Despite, or perhaps because of those traits, Melville's tale of Ahab chasing his huge white nemesis 'til death do they part is a sea story that stays with the reader long, long after the last page.
Rachel Carson's Sea Trilogy: Carson is best-known for her 1962 clarion call about the hazards of pesticides and pollution, Silent Spring. But decades before that, she had already made a name for herself with the three books in what came to be called her Sea Trilogy: Under the Sea-Wind (1941), The Sea Around Us (1951, a National Book Award winner), and The Edge of the Sea (1955). Fusing lyricism with her own background in the sciences, Carson painted a detailed portrait of Earth's oceans, tide pools, and shorelines -- and the myriad creatures, including humans, who rely on the watery world for their very lives.
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder: David Grann (the guy who wrote Killers of the Flower Moon) wrote this riveting tale of the HMS Wager, a square-rigged sixth-rate Royal Navy ship, and the terrible mutiny that took place after the ship's wreckage in 1741. Chilling stuff -- and hugely entertaining.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Jules Verne's sci-fi novel, first published in English in 1872, details the wild journey of the crew of the submarine Nautilus, narrated by a fictional French natural scientist named Pierre Aronnax. The book's most memorable character, by far, however -- and one of literature's great antiheroes -- is the charismatic misanthrope, Captain Nemo. Driven to near-madness by the loss of his wife and children, who were killed in a hinted-at, unnamed war, Nemo took to the sea with the sole intent of engaging in science and avoiding mankind. With its wonderfully detailed scenes -- an attack on the Nautilus by a giant squid, a glimpse of the lost city of Atlantis, etc. -- and intensely drawn, cuckoo characters, 20,000 Leagues is a quintessential ocean adventure novel.
The Devil's Teeth: Susan Casey's 2005 book about, in the subhead's words, "Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks," is part solid natural history, part engaging personal memoir, and part love letter to one of the world's most misunderstood apex predators. The Devil's Teeth of the title refers to the sharp, lonely spits of rock, the Farallon Islands, that jut out of the Pacific 25 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge. It's a nickname given long ago to the islands by sailors -- but also inevitably brings to mind the stereotypical view of the great white as a killing and eating machine. The book recounts Casey's long struggle to join scientists studying great whites in their natural habitat, and to dispel myths about the remarkable creatures that have helped push them, and other sharks, on to Vulnerable, Endangered, and Critically Endangered lists in the space of a few decades.
Fans of the ocean and its amazing inhabitants might also enjoy this: Eight Books About Intelligent Sea Creatures.
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Benedict Cosgrove is a Librarian at YPL's Riverfront branch. He's currently reading The Language of Thieves: My Family's Obsession with a Secret Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate, by Martin Puchner.
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