Famous Stories Of The Sea And Ships
from The introduction:
It is not surprising that island people, like the British, should be interested in ships and the oceans through which they sail. Indeed, this interest is shared by all English-speaking countries, and it has been their love of the deep waters and fellow-feeling for mariners that inspired so many of their writers to let their imaginations sail full-rigged across both tide and time. Here are nearly a score of their stories featuring the sea, its ships, and the men who made them either a career or a home, and sometimes both.
They are stories with a wide range of appeal. Some belong to legend and even mythology, others are reviving stories. Some arc stories are written to excite and entertain the reader, others are calculated to win his sympathy or touch his pride. In their several ways all are stimulating, for very seldom can an honestly told sea story to prove dull or lacking in real interest.
‘The sea has magic denied the plains and hills beyond the coasts against which it breaks. Because it remains in wide areas un- fathomable, and therefore unconquered by man’s daring and unexplored by his probing curiosity, it has a mystery all its own. Man has scaled Everest and flown over othér lonely peaks hitherto inaccessible, but the ocean still has its fastnesses where man has never ventured and returned. Indeed, it is possible that man may find his way to the moon and back before he has learned the true depths of the oceans over which he sails, and today also flies. Yet these oceans make up four-fifths of man’s physical world.
The sea, therefore, is a perpetual challenge. For this reason, it will always fascinate the adventurous, as a magnet fascinates steel. Especially those who like adventurous reading. In this book is an abundance of such adventurous reading for lovers of the sea and ships.
The stories include every aspect of the hazards and challenges of going down to the sea in ships. No youngster—or anyone young in heart, for that matter—who thrills to the sound and sight of waves breaking on a beach, or to a glimpse of sailor smoke on an unbroken horizon, can fail to be enthralled by these narratives by master story-tellers.
Not all the stories are fiction. Some are factual, and these are by no means the least gripping. But all of them will be as fresh tomorrow as they were yesterday, and all are worth not only reading but reading again.
This book contains collections of the best sea and ships stories by famous authors
Contents of the book:
An Atlantic Mutiny By W. Clark Russell
Cape Horn Companions By Richard Henry
Tragedy In The Channel By Edward Howard
The Polar Ship By Edgar Allan Poe
Three Castaways By R. M. Ballantyne
The Argonauts Set Sail By Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Acapulco Galleon By Richard Walter
Under The Ice By Jules Verne
In The Basque Roads By G. A. Henty
The Invincible Armada By Charles Kingsley
A Slaver Shows Fight By Michael Scott
The Yellow Whale By Herman Melville
Dangerous Shoals By John Barrow S
steerage To Liberty By Charles Dickens
The Jolly Roger Comes Down By Robert Louis Stevenson
The Nelson Touch By Robert Southey
Petticoat Ensign By Captain Marryat
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