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Nautical Fiction

Nautical fiction is about as close to sailing the high seas as you can get these days. If that sounds a little depressing, remember that real sailors had to contend with all manner of disease, loneliness, bugs, pirates (who were not fun and not glamorous), shipwrecks, storms, mutiny, madness, poor (or non-existent) sanitation, frequent injury....basically, really bad stuff was lurking behind every coil of rope or powder keg, sometimes in them.

From that perspective, living vicariously through Horatio Hornblower, Jack Aubrey, Fletcher Christian, Ishmael, and Nathaniel Bowditch seems like a pretty great alternative. The fact that many of those characters were the inventions of seafaring men who knew what it was like out there on the blue and harsh ocean simply makes these stories all the more believable and fascinating.

It's usually not a good idea for writers to clutter their fiction with jargon—it can distract us from the narrative, frustrate us because we don't know exactly what's going on, or slow us down because we have to look up every other word. Stories about sailors, ships and the sea, however, need the technical terminology to help establish the authentic atmosphere, and in most cases it does exactly that whether you know the terms or not.

These are some of our favorite books at Exodus. Sailing maintains a romantic appeal that steamships and automated consoles have failed to render obsolete, and these writers give us exactly the elements we want: the danger, the fear, the glory. If you've got enough imagination to imagine running away and serving as cabin boy aboard a man o' war, you've got enough to imagine similar adventures on these pages.

Some of the best writers of all time wrote sea stories. Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville—men whose love of words enabled them to transcribe their love of the water for generations to come. As long as they're read, the creaking of masts and the crack of sails will remind us of the days before man believed he'd mastered the sea, when the sea clearly still mastered him.

Review by C. Hollis Crossman
C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he is a husband and father, teaches adult Sunday school in his Presbyterian congregation, and likes weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur. Read more of his reviews here.

 

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Active Filters: 6th grade (Ages 11-12), Hardcover
Apprentice of Florence
by Ann Kyle, illustrated by Erick Berry
from Houghton Mifflin
for 5th-8th grade
1934 Newbery Honor Book
in Historical Fiction (Location: FIC-HIF)
Black Falcon
by Armstrong Sperry
from John C. Winston
for 6th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$18.00 (1 in stock)
Boy Sailor with John Paul Jones
by H. C. Thomas
from Whitman Publishing Company
for 5th-7th grade
in Vintage History & Biographies (Location: VIN-HIS)
Bright Island
by Mabel Louise Robinson
75th Anniversary Edition from Random House Books for Young Readers
for 5th-8th grade
1938 Newbery Honor Book
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
Bright Island
by Mabel Louise Robinson, illustrated by Lynd Ward
4th printing from Random House Books for Young Readers
for 5th-8th grade
1938 Newbery Honor Book
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Captains Courageous
Junior Deluxe Editions
by Rudyard Kipling, illustrated by Lawrence Beall Smith
from Nelson Doubleday, Inc.
for 5th-10th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch
by Jean Lee Latham, illustrated by John O'Hara Cosgrave II
from Houghton Mifflin
Biography for 5th-9th grade
1956 Newbery Medal winner
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Curse of Carne's Hold
by G. A. Henty
from Robinson Curriculum
for 6th-10th grade
in G. A. Henty Books (Location: FIC-HEN)
Danger to Windward
by Armstrong Sperry
1st edition from John C. Winston
for 5th-8th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Dark Frigate
by Charles Boardman Hawes, illustrated by Warrenn Chappell
from Little, Brown & Company
for 5th-8th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
$15.00 (1 in stock)
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by Rudyard Kipling, illustrated by Dick Cole
from Classic Publishing Corporation
for 4th-8th grade
in Educator Classic Library (Location: VIN-ECL)
ECL: Treasure Island
Educator Classic Library #1
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Don Irwin
Complete and Unabridged Edition from Classic Press
in Educator Classic Library (Location: VIN-ECL)
Hidden Foe
by G. A. Henty
from Robinson Curriculum
for 6th-10th grade
in G. A. Henty Books (Location: FIC-HEN)
Hull-Down for Action
by Armstrong Sperry
from Doubleday & Company
for 5th-9th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Innocent Voyage
by Richard Hughes, illustrated by Lynd Ward
from Heritage Press
for 4th-7th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$7.00 (2 in stock)
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First Edition (first thus) from MDC Books
for 4th-6th grade
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$8.00 (1 in stock)
John Hawke's Fortune
by G. A. Henty
from Robinson Curriculum
for 6th-10th grade
in G. A. Henty Books (Location: FIC-HEN)
Kidnapped
by Robert Louis Stevenson; illustrated by William Sharp
from Random House
Action/Adventure for 5th-9th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$6.50 (1 in stock)
Lost Lagoon
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from Doubleday & Company
for 5th-9th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Moby-Dick (retold)
by Herman Melville, presented by Jane Needle, illustrated by Patrick Benson
1st edition from Candlewick Press
for 4th-8th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Robinson Crusoe (abridged)
Illustrated Junior Library Series 2
by Daniel Defoe, illustrated by Lynd Ward
from Grosset & Dunlap
for 5th-9th grade
in Illustrated Junior Library (Location: VIN-IJL)
Robinson Crusoe (abridged)
Illustrated Junior Library Series 1
by Daniel Defoe, illustrated by Lynd Ward
from Grosset & Dunlap
for 5th-9th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Scanlon of the Sub Service
A Doubleday Signal Book
by Dan Senseney, illustrated by Ray Johnson
from Doubleday & Company
for 4th-8th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Storm Canvas
Junior Literary Guild
by Armstrong Sperry
from John C. Winston
for 6th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Story of Doctor Dolittle
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by Hugh Lofting (illustrated by Michael Hague)
from HarperCollins
for 4th-8th grade
in Fantasy Fiction (Location: FIC-FAN)
Tales of Pirates and Buccaneers
by Howard Pyle
from Dilithium Press, Ltd.
for 4th-10th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Treasure Island
Illustrated Junior Library Series 4
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Norman Price
from Grosset & Dunlap
Action/Adventure for 5th-9th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Treasure Island
Illustrated Junior Library Series 3
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Norman Price
from Grosset & Dunlap
Action/Adventure for 5th-9th grade
in Illustrated Junior Library (Location: VIN-IJL)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
Treasure Island
Scribner Illustrated Classics
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth
Deluxe from Atheneum
for 5th-9th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
$18.00 (1 in stock)
Treasure Island
Illustrated Junior Library Series 2
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Norman Price
from Grosset & Dunlap
for 5th-10th grade
in Illustrated Junior Library (Location: VIN-IJL)
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson
from Junior Deluxe Editions
for 4th-8th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Frank Godwin
from Reader's Digest
for 5th-10th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by John Cameron
from David McKay Company
for 5th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by William Sharp
from Grosset & Dunlap
Action/Adventure for 5th-9th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$8.00 (2 in stock)
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Henry C. Pitz
from Nelson Doubleday, Inc.
Action/Adventure for 5th-9th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Edmund Dulac
from Abaris Books
for 5th-10th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Igor Iljinski
from Barron's
for 4th-10th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Treasure Island
Scribner Illustrated Classics
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth
Deluxe from Atheneum
for 5th-9th grade
in Scribner Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SCRIB)
Treasure Island
Illustrated Junior Library Series 1
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Norman Price
from Grosset & Dunlap
for 5th-10th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by John Lawrence
from Candlewick Press
Action/Adventure for 5th-9th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
$15.00 (1 in stock)
Treasure Island
Illustrated Junior Library Series 2
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Norman Price
from Grosset & Dunlap
for 5th-10th grade
in Illustrated Junior Library (Location: VIN-IJL)
$9.00 (1 in stock)
Treasure Island
Rainbow Classics
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by C. B. Falls
from World Publishing Company
for 5th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson
from Whitman Publishing Company
for 4th-8th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated with stills from 1934 MGM film
from Grosset & Dunlap
Action/Adventure for 5th-9th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Treasure Island
Macmillan Classics
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by John Falter
from Macmillan
for 4th-8th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$10.00 (1 in stock)
Treasure Island
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from New York Graphic Society
for 5th-9th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
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Two Years Before the Mast
by Richard Henry Dana Jr.
from Nelson Doubleday, Inc.
for 6th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Two Years Before the Mast (abridged)
by Richard Henry Dana Jr.
from Nelson Doubleday, Inc.
for 5th-9th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Wanderer
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$8.00 (1 in stock)
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