Sea Chanties
Discover the best sea chanties and maritime adventures in this curated book list, featuring timeless classics like Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Sea Wolf by Jack London, and Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl. From pirate tales and nautical fiction to epic voyages, explore essential chanties-inspired reads for lovers of the ocean and adventure literature.
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The Sea Wolf
by Jack London
The Sea Wolf is Jack London’s powerful and gripping saga of Humphrey Van Weyden, captured by a seal-hunting ship and now an unwilling sailor under its dreaded captain, Wolf Larsen. The men who sailed with Larsen were treacherous outcasts, but the captain himself was the legendary Sea Wolf–a violent brute of a man. Jack London was a worshipper of the strong and virtuous hero, and a firm believer in the inevitable triumph of good. The master storyteller nowhere demonstrates this theme more vividly than in this classic American tale of peril and adventure, good and evil.
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Herman Melville: Typee, Omoo, Mardi (LOA #1)
by Herman Melville
This first volume of The Library of America's three-volume edition of the complete prose works of Herman Melville includes three romances of the South Seas. Typee and Omoo, based on the young Melville's experiences on a whaling ship, are exuberant accounts of the idyllic life among the "cannibals" in Polynesia. They remained his most popular works well into the 20th century. Mardi ("the world" in Polynesian) is a mixture of love story, adventure, and political allegory, set on a mythical Pacific island, that looks forward to the complexities of Moby-Dick. Together, these three romances give early evidence of the genius and daring that make Melville the master novelist of the sea and a precursor of modernist literature. Two companion volumes--Herman Melville: Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick and Herman Melville: Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, The Confidence Man, Uncollected Prose, and Billy Budd complete this edition of Melville's prose. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
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Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson
While going through the possessions of a deceased guest who owed them money, the mistress of the inn and her son find a treasure map that leads them to a pirate's fortune.
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Lafitte the Pirate
by Lyle Saxon
Jean Lafitte, the famous buccaneer, terrorized the Gulf of Mexico during the early 1800s from his hidden base in Louisiana's swamps at Barataria Bay. His battles with the law were legendary: when Governor William Claiborne of Louisiana offered a reward for Lafitte's capture, the pirate offered an even larger reward for the governor! But when the British approached Lafitte during the War of 1812, asking for his help in their invasion of Louisiana, the pirate instead joined forces with Andrew Jackson and helped rout the enemy at the Battle of New Orleans. Lyle Saxon chronicles Lafitte's colorful life and examines some puzzling questions about the famous rogue. Where was Jean Lafitte born? Did he really participate in the French Revolution? What was his part in the plot to rescue Napoleon? And where is his treasure hidden? Separating fact from legend, Saxon paints an entertaining and realistic portrait of a truly remarkable figure in American history. Book jacket.
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Polar Star
by Martin Cruz Smith
Arkady Renko has made too many enemies and now he toils in obscurity on a Russian factory ship in the middle of the Bering Sea. But when a female crew member is picked up dead with the day's catch, Arkady becomes obsessed with the case and once again discovers more than he wants to know and certainly more than he bargained for....
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Kon-Tiki
by Thor Heyerdahl
The story of the Pacific journey by six men on a raft in search of the path taken by Kon-Tiki, a white voyager, 1500 years before. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
