Sea Stories Books

Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean From authentic accounts of modern voyagers and travellers; designed for the entertainment and instruction of young people.By Marmaduke Park.With Numerous Illustrations. The White Shark.PHILADELPHIA:C.G. HENDERSON & CO.,NO. 164 CHESTNUT STREET.1852.[pg 5] The White Shark. STORIES OF THE OCEAN.VOLNEY BECKNER. The white sharks are the dread of sailors in all hot... more...

PREFACE That all Defoe's novels, with the exception of "Robinson Crusoe," should have been covered with the dust of neglect for many generations, is a plain proof of how much fashions in taste affect the popularity of the British classics. It is true that three generations or so ago, Defoe's works were edited by both Sir Walter Scott and Hazlitt, and that this masterly piece of... more...

CHAPTER I.With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength,Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves,Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length,She seems a sea wasp flying on the waves.Dryden.It was between the hours of ten and twelve on a fine night of February, in the year sixteen hundred and fifty-six, that three men moored a light skiff in a small bay, overshadowed by the heavy and sombre... more...

Mark Seaworth. Picture a wide expanse of ocean, smooth as a polished mirror, and shining like molten silver; a sky of intense blue, without a cloud or speck, forming a vast arch resting on the water; no land or rock in sight; the boundless sea on every side; the sun travelling slowly and majestically along the arch, and casting his burning rays upon the glittering plain below. Let us pause and... more...

CHAPTER I. SPREADING THE STRANDS. “Shout three times three, like Ocean’s surges,Join, brothers, join, the toast with me;Here’s to the wind of life, which urgesThe ship with swelling waves o’er sea!” “Masters, I can not spin a yarnTwice laid with words of silken stuff.A fact’s a fact; and ye may larnThe rights o’ this, though wild and roughMy words may loom. ’Tis your consarn,Not... more...

First day out.Weather horrible, uncertain and squally, but interesting.Developments promised.Feel fine. Smith's Log. Several tugs were persuasively nudging the Clan Macgregor out from her pier. Beside the towering flanks of the sea-monster, newest and biggest of her species, they seemed absurdly inadequate to the job. But they made up for their insignificance by self-important and fussy puffings... more...

THE SCHOONER. The great Pacific is the scene of our story. On a beautiful morning, many years ago, a little schooner might have been seen floating, light and graceful as a seamew, on the breast of the slumbering ocean. She was one of those low, black-hulled vessels, with raking, taper masts, trimly-cut sails, and elegant form, which we are accustomed to associate with the idea of a yacht or a pirate.... more...

CHAPTER I IN WHICH I AM A CAITIFF I WAS sitting at one of my favorite spots engaged in looking through my fly-book for some lure that might, perhaps, mend my luck in the afternoon’s fishing. At least, I had within the moment been so engaged; although the truth is that the evening was so exceptionally fine, and the spot always so extraordinarily attractive to me—this particular angle of the stream,... more...

INTRODUCTION Among the few subjects which are still left at the disposal of the duly-gifted writer of romance is the Pirate. Not but that many have written of pirates. Defoe, after preparing the ground by a pamphlet story on the historic Captain Avery, wrote The Life, Adventures, and Piracies of Captain Singleton. Sir Walter Scott made use in somewhat the same fashion of the equally historic Gow—that... more...

CHAPTER I. CHARLESTON, SEPTEMBER 27th, 1869.—It is high tide, and three o'clock in the afternoon when we leave the Battery-quay; the ebb carries us off shore, and as Captain Huntly has hoisted both main and top sails, the northerly breeze drives the "Chancellor" briskly across the bay. Fort Sumter ere long is doubled, the sweeping batteries of the mainland on our left are soon passed,... more...