November: The High Seas

Our monthly theme for November is the The High Seas. That’s the ocean, as in fishing, sailing, trading, setting out to explore new worlds, and quite often fighting. You could read a book about Nelson’s Navy, sailors circling the globe, merchants shipping tea and china to eager European customers, or maybe the life of a quiet fishing village in a remote corner of the Atlantic seabord…
Whatever you choose, I hope you enjoy it!

You can add your book to the Wiki here: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Reading_Through_Time_Challenge#November:...

I am planning on reading The Wreckers, the first in a trilogy entitled "The High Seas Trilogy". Author Iain Lawrence is a Canadian author who usually writes YA and children's stories. He was awarded the Governor General's Literary Award in 2007.

I should be finally reading Moby Dick but know from experience thats n ot going to happen. Can we do nonfiction here? I have a few ideas

I would like to read The Ship of Silence which a story of what appears to be an abandoned ship. I would also like to do a reread of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. Also have never read Captains Courageous, so that might be in the mix!

>3 cindydavid4: Yes, of course you can read non-fiction.

I'm planning on reading The Tenth Gift.

I'm going to finally get around to Captains Courageous, which I've never yet read in all my 74 years (and which is surprising because Kim is one of my most-reread books).

And I may do a reread of Mary Ellen Chase – either or both of Mary Peters or Silas Crockett. Today a not-very-well-remembered Maine author, Chase was an English professor and eventual department chair at Smith College (her students included Anne Morrow Lindburgh, Sylvia Plath, and Betty Friedan) and the literary/historical bridge between Sarah Orne Jewett and Elizabeth Strout. Chase's best novel (IMO, and also I believe Chase's own personal favorite) was The Edge of Darkness, but that's not a novel of the "high seas."

someone was asking for an historic fiction book with humor English Passengers appears to fit the bill

I've been meaning to read:
Mutiny on the Bounty
Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig (a historical fiction account of Chinese pirate Zheng Yi Sao, the pirate queen who brought China to its knees)
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by S.A. Chakraborty (historical fiction of pirates in the Indian ocean).

I also recently finished Saltblood by Francesca De Tores, which was a fantastic, historical fiction retelling of the life of Mary Read, one of the women pirates of the golden age.

Hello fellow seafarers. I read MOBY DICK in December 2018, and it was lovely in the beginning pages; every sentence is filled with water imagery. What a cozy feeling. Ishmael said "whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul;" I think our friend may have been a bit depressed. This November I want to read Poe's NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM OF NANTUCKET. Has anyone here read this one? The reviews seem a bit mixed. Published 13 years before MOBY DICK, who knows, perhaps the one influenced the other? I love spotting those Easter eggs!

I'm planning to listen to Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester and read by the author.

>10 WordMaven: Haven’t read either of those, but thanks for putting them on my radar!
>11 kac522: The title makes me want to read this instantly.

>11 kac522: That one is going on my WL. Winchester has been hit or miss for me, but I'll give him another chance!

I can recommend: Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen.

>12 MissWatson:, >13 Tess_W: I generally enjoy Winchester's books, although he can sometimes jump from topic to topic. For me he always makes the most mundane stories interesting.

>14 kac522: Krakatoa I liked, The Man Who Loved China , not so much!

>13 Tess_W: he blows hot and cold for me but when hi does it right its agreat read

I plan to read Winchester's Atlantic. It has been sitting on my shelves for ages. I'm just tipping into it and already it's giving me a flavour of how my mother crossed the Atlantic on her many ocean voyages.

>10 WordMaven: I have read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. It was a bit of a mess and ended very abruptly, as I recall. I think Poe struggled outside the short story format.

>6 WelshBookworm: The book blurb makes this book sound very interesting! I'm off to find it!

This theme is a rich vein for both fiction and non-fiction. It will be fun to decide what to choose.

I read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It's been about 10 years since I last read this epic poem. The poem begins dramatically, with an old sailor—the Ancient Mariner—detaining a wedding guest to tell his story. What follows is a tale of a sea voyage gone disastrously wrong. Good regardless of the amount of times read. Coleridge has a way with words! Only 25 pages in length. Free on Kindle (US) and only $.99 though Audible, it's worth every penny! The reader, Nate Maughan, is superb. RTT: High Seas 5 stars

The Ship of Silence by Albert Wetjen This is supposed to be maritime "horror". I suppose the author creates a unknowing, moody atmosphere. However, this "ghostship" mystery is lacking. This episode takes place on the "Robert Sutter", an abandoned ship from Sydney to Callao. Deal of the day sometime in 2023 from Audible 52 minutes. 2.5 stars

reading english passengers and it has its share of humor. among the more iffy parts. writing is very good

I completed Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling which tells the story of Harvey Cheyne, a spoiled and teenager who falls overboard from a luxury liner and is rescued by a fishing schooner from Gloucester. The fishermen refuse to take him home until their season ends, forcing Harvey to live and work among them. Through hard labor Harvey becomes a man. Everything is pretty much predictable. 181 pages 3 stars RTT: High Seas

I had planned to read Beat to Quarters this month for the Napoleonic Era quarterly Reading Through Time challenge. Fortunately for me, it also fits this month's challenge for the monthly Reading Through Time. It is part of the set of Horatio Hornblower books that I inherited from my father.

In Beat to Quarters, Hornblower is captain of HMS Lydia, a thirty-six-gun frigate. He has been sent to the Pacific side of central America to make an alliance with a group of rebels to the ruling Spaniards and and 'to take, sink, burn or destroy' the fifty-gun Spanish ship of the line Natividad. Unfortunately, after capturing that ship and turning it over to the rebels, he encounters the Spanish at Panama, only to discover that everything has changed, and the Spanish in Europe have revolted against Bonaparte's rule and have now allied themselves with the English. Hornblower must now fight the Natividad again, as well as take on an unwanted female passenger, Lady Barbara Wellesley.

There is plenty of naval action in this story, as well as a bit of romance. I enjoyed the story overall. My copy of Beat to Quarters is actually in an omnibus with the next two Captain Horatio Hornblower books. I have started the next one, Ship of the Line, which also fits both this month's challenge and the quarterly one.

And I have now finished Ship of the Line. This time we see Hornblower taking part directly in the war with the French. He is commanding a ship of the line, the seventy-four-gun HMS Sutherland. The book opens with Hornblower's struggle to get the ship stocked and to find enough men to staff her. In this story, he faces many different situations, from serving as part of a convoy to protect commercial ships to fighting a variety of battles against the French and their Italian allies along the Mediterranean coast of Spain and France. I enjoyed this story more than the first one. There's lots of adventure and a variety of battles to fight. The story ends on a cliffhanger, so I hope I'll be able to find the time before the end of the year to read the final book in the Hornblower omnibus, Flying Colours.

I still haven't decided what to read for this month's theme.

Oh my, it’s the second half of the month already, and I haven’t gotten round to this yet myself. Right now I’m still in Paris with Zola, but the next one will be something naval.

I completed my read of The Wreckers by Iain Lawrence. I enjoyed this YA story and will plan on reading more sea adventures by this author,

As nautical books go, The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym offers a full banquet of stowaways, mutiny, shipwreck, cannibalism while adrift, and going where no (white) man has gone before. To be honest, I found it all a bit much, and Poe’s obsessions and manias are something I don’t understand. I didn’t really know anything about him before, and I can’t say that the notes and introduction helped with that. I’ll write this off as an interesting experience. I do think, however, about re-reading O’Brian’s Desolation Island now, just to see what he does with the place.

>30 MissWatson: This is on my TBR, perhaps I'm going to save it for the next fitting prompt! (Pym)

Starting my read today: Middle Passage by Charles Johnson.

I started reading
THE CAPTAIN’S WIFE
by Douglas Kelley

Based on a true story.

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester (2010), read by the author

This is a sprawling history of the Atlantic Ocean, starting from its geological formations to the first human interactions to first voyages to modern commerce and wars and ending with man's neglect and polluting of the ocean. Mostly it works, although like any Winchester book, it goes off on various paths which sometimes work, but sometimes don't. Some of the last bits on climate change I assume are dated (published in 2010) and it would be interesting if Winchester would publish an update to the book with current trends and thought.

At any event I listened to this on audio read by Winchester, who is an excellent reader and made the content come alive. I think if I had read it in print, I probably would have given up at some point. In the end I'm glad I had the audio and stuck with it.

I just started In the Hurricane's Eye by Nathaniel Philbrick, being a different look at the Battle of Yorktown in the American Revolution. This focuses on the naval battle between the French and the British and how that kept Cornwall is penned in with no reinforcements or escape. Good so far.

>35 cmbohn: I've not read that one, but I have Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex on my TBR. This would be the time to read it, but unfortunately, I'm out of time and also am tired of the sea (for now!).

I just finished Robin Prior's Gallipoli: The End of the Myth. It is a decent overview of the campaign from the British side. The Turks and French get shorted, the French especially considering their records are much more accessible. The Russians and the Balkan states are discussed, but only in relation to British aims (fantasies), and with very little understanding of their complex issues. Finally, there is almost nothing on the political aftermath, even in the UK, which is strange considering the amount of time spent on the political machinations leading to the campaign in the UK; nor the effects on military doctrine for later battles and wars, which was considerable.

The naval side of things are decently mapped out in the beginning, but hardly touched upon after the land operations begin.

I decided to read a couple of intellectually undemanding swashbucklers for this theme, as I could not face anything more weighty, given other pressures in life. So I read two 19th century historical novels set during the era of Francis Drake and the high watermark (sorry for the pun!) of Elizabethan seafaring.

In In the Days of Drake by J S Fletcher, Humphrey Salkeld is heir to an estate owned by his uncle Sir Thurstan. But another nephew, Jasper Stapleton, is egged on by his mother, Sir Thurstan’s sister, to resent Humphrey’s succession. Humphrey and Jasper also quarrel over the love of a beautiful girl, Rose Herrick. On a business trip to Scarborough, Jasper tricks his cousin and the latter ends up a prisoner aboard a Spanish ship and is forceably taken to Mexico. He faces imprisonment, torture by the Inquisition and being sentenced to be a galley slave on both sides of the Atlantic, working and struggling and fighting alongside the curiously named Cornish sailor Pharaoh Nanjulian. In the end they escape thanks to the timely intervention of Francis Drake himself, whose crew rescue all the galley slaves suffering under their Spanish oppressors, and Humphrey returns home to claim his bride. This novel is a product of its time in its simplistic description of heroic (Protestant) Englishmen fighting evil (Catholic) Spaniards, but is good fun.

Under Drake's Flag by G A Henty concerns the adventures of swashbuckling young hero Ned Hearne, who seems to be able to achieve anything and survive any experience, alongside various of his three friends, travelling with Francis Drake on his circumnavigation of the globe. Ned faces down jealous crewmates, sharks, American Indians (sic), other native populations, and numerous Spaniards, including members of the Inquisition. The author makes some attempt to show the complexity of history and how non-English groups perceive English actions, though there are still many stereotypes of the time with regard to heroic Englishmen against evil Spaniards, and primitive and savage natives and negroes. None of this is to criticise Henty - he was a man of his times, and there is a depth to parts of this novel lacking in some similar ones written around the same time. It is mostly good swashbuckling fun, though a bit repetitive in places.

>36 Tess_W: I really like Philbrick. But it's better to save it for when you're in the mood, I think.

Finished Kipling's Captains Courageous 2½** early December 1, just getting around to posting. Kim's one of my favorite books, but I just didn't that much care for Captains Courageous. Maybe if I'd read it when I was younger.... but it just seemed a little too much the "boy's adventure" kind of book that I'd find boring today. Or maybe if Kipling's use of dialect had been a little less intense, or if I'd had a good annotated/footnoted copy. But the combination of struggling through the sailors' dialogue combined with my relative lack of interest in the subject leads me to that 2½** rating.

I just finished The End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad, one of the few Conrad works that I hadn't read yet. Originally published in 1902, this short novel was republished during Conrad's lifetime in a single-volume collection also including Youth and Heart of Darkness. It's one of Conrad's lesser known and lesser read works, and I'd concur that it doesn't match up to his best works. Still, it's Conrad, which for me has almost always meant, at the very least, enjoyable reading. Captain Whalley has been at sea for decades. He's seen, with regret, the closing of the age of the sailing ship and the onset of the steamship era. Places in the Eastern seas that Whalley was among the first Europeans to enter, and passages he was among the first Europeans to chart, have now become commonplace shipping lanes and established colonial ports. Yet he is still a man of vigor and strength. He is a widower who still sharply mourns his wife, who had shared his enthusiasm for exploration and for the sea. And he has one grown daughter living in Europe who has made an unfortunate marriage to a man of ill luck in business, and now of health too poor for working. So she is entirely dependent on her father financially. So he must keep working, though at his age commands are harder and harder to come by. He buys into a partnership in, and a command of, a that steamship that plies a boring and barely remunerative trade among the islands. But his partner, who is also the ship's chief engineer, is a vane and grasping man, and the first mate is a conniver, endlessly scheming for a way to get ahead. Whalley is enduring it all for the sake of his daughter until fate pulls one more fast one on him.

At 174 pages, this is a relatively quick read. For me it was a pleasure, as I love having Conrad's voice in my head. And indeed I do find as I read him that I feel like he's talking to me and telling me a story one-on-one. I've always enjoyed his insights into human nature, his sometimes slightly off-kilter way with words, and his descriptions of nature. Here's The End of the Tether's opening paragraph:

For a long time after the course of the steamer Sofala had been altered for the land, the low swampy coast had retained its appearance of a mere smudge of darkness beyond a belt of glitter. The sun rays fell violently upon the palm see--semed to shatter themselves upon an adamantine surface into sparkling dust, into a dazzling vapor of light that blinded the eye and wearied the brain with its unsteady brightness.

And here's a short passage that struck me particularly, especially the short second paragraph. During a flashback describing Whalley's life and career, we come to the death of his wife at sea, their young daughter on board with them as well.

But Captain Whalley could in a half-hour of solitude live again all his life, with its romance, its idyl, and its sorrow. He had to close her eyes himself. She went away from under the ensign like a sailor's wife, a sailor herself at heart. He had read the service over her, out of her own prayer-book, without a break in his voice. When he raised his eyes he could see old Swinburne facing him with his cap pressed to his breast, and his rugged, weather-beaten, impassive face streaming with drops of water like a lump of chipped red granite in a shower. It was all very well for that old sea-dog to cry. He had to read on to the end; but after the splash he did not remember much of what happened for the next few days. An elderly sailor of the crew, deft at needlework, put together a mourning frock for the child out of one of her black skirts.

He was not likely to forget; but you cannot dam up life like a sluggish stream. It will break out and flow over a man's troubles, it will close upon a sorrow like the sea upon a dead body, no matter how much love has gone to the bottom.

So I enjoyed The End of the Tether and would recommend it to anyone without a previously minted antipathy for Conrad and/or his writing style. He's not for everyone. This short novel won't get you too deeply into the Conrad weeds: it's relatively straightforwardly written and it includes some of Conrad's frequent themes, including the ability or inability, as the case may be from story to story, of an upright, moral person to endure in the face of scoundrels and the cruel turns that life itself can dish out. But a reader wishing to discover why Conrad devotees consider him to be such a great writer should start elsewhere, as this is not one of Conrad's classics.