If you like historical sailing novels...

Thank you for e-mailing the Central Rappahannock Regional Library for a
Book Match. You asked for books like Patrick O'Brian's and mentioned
liking sailing novels like Moby Dick and Mutiny on the Bounty. I've
pulled a few suggestions together for you of books dealing with men and
the sea, from times gone by.

Are you familiar with the following authors? They write series, not
unlike Patrick O'Brian, so if you like a book by one of these authors,
you may have sequels to draw from!

Alexander Kent
Try Midshipman Bolitho,the first of his Richard Bolitho series. "The
year is 1772, and Richard Bolitho is a sixteen-year-old midshipman about
to undergo a severe initiation into the game of seamanship. Two novels
in one, Midshipman Bolitho follows young Bolitho's adventures as he
intercepts and destroys a band of vicious pirates, and then is swept
away on a dangerous mission through the treacherous stamping ground of
smugglers, wreckers, and murderers." (Book Description)

Dudley Pope
Another first novel of a series, Ramage. "The young lieutenant takes up
special orders direct from Nelson himself which bring news of a mission
close to his own heart. In a daring foray, under the very nose of the
French Mediterranean fleet, Ramage is to sail his tiny cutter close in
to the Italian shore and rescue a party of stranded aristocrats from
Napoleon's fast-advancing army." (From the publisher)

Dewey Lambdin
King's Coat, Alan Lewrie Naval Adventures. "Lambdin's Alan Lewrie stacks
up well with C.S. Forester's Hornblowe r and Alexander Kent's Bolitho as
a fictional naval officer. In this first novel, Lewrie, at 17, is
unwillingly made a midshipman in the British navy of 1780. He sails
first in a ship-of-the-line, later in a schooner, and finally a frigate.
Storms, battles, duels, and difficulties begin to change him from a
spoiled fop into a competent officer who is slowly coming to take pride
in his hard service. Lambdin makes his character very human and
believable. Questions about his background and prospects are left
intriguingly unanswered. Lambdin also demonstrates a good enough grasp
of sailing and 18th-century sea warfare to satisfy readers of this
genre, who are quick to catch any mistakes. A good yarn that promises to
become a good series." (Library Journal)

David Donachie
Devil's Own Luck: Privateersman Mysteries. "Royal Navy
officer-turned-privateer Harry Ludlow might get rich capturing French
trade ships, an activity sanctioned under the wartime rules of 1793. In
David Donachie's first book, The Devil's Own Luck: The Privateersmen
Mysteries, Harry's brother James is accused of murder, and they find
themselves in trouble with corrupt naval officers as the war rages
around them." (Publishers Weekly)

C.S. Forester
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (Horatio Hornblower Series). "Horatio
Hornblower was born in C.S. Forester's fertile imagination and became
arguably more famous, certainly more personal, than Nelson, Cook and
Drake combined. He fought in a dozen major campaigns during the
Napoleonic wars, and it was in these pages that we first got a glimmer
of just how much Bonaparte was hated, and why.
Forester's genius was not tidy, and so this story, which sets Hornblower
on course at age 17, is Forester's sixth book about him, though it
should have been the first. Lieutenant Hornblower, which follows it,
carries the intrepid young man another step forward in his career."
(From the Publisher)

Below are some individual works which you may find interesting:

Kydd, by Julian Stockwin
This is the debut novel in a thrilling new series of the seafaring
adventures of Thomas Paine Kydd, a young man pressed into service who
comes of age in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. (catalog
summary)

Fire Down Below, by William Golding
The conclusion of the trilogy he began with the Booker Prize-winning
Rites of Passage (1980) and followed with Close Quarters (1987), Nobel
Laureate Golding's densely complex, subtle and exacting latest novel
tussles intriguingly with thematic and formal problems that have
occupied the author in his previous works. The present trilogy enriches
itself by self-consciously playing off its fictional precursors in a
number of dimensions, including, most obviously, that of the voyage of
self-discovery. In relating an almost year-long voyage (in the
Napoleonic era) from England to the Antipodes of a motley band of
passengers and the crew of a decrepit former man-o'-war as they
experience many of life's dramas, the trilogy evokes tales by Melville,
Voltaire and Homer among others. (Publishers Weekly)

Apprentice to the Sea, by Philip McCutchan
Veteran author of numerous military novels, McCutchan launches a
nautical series starring apprentice seaman Tom Chatto. "Fresh from the
West of Ireland," 16-year-old Tom comes to England and is apprenticed to
the commercial barque Pass of Drumochter, one of the few sailing ships
left in the mid-1890s. Adjusting to the rigorous shipboard routine, the
innocent lad receives his schooling from a colorful cast of characters:
the sexagenarian Captain Landon and his beautiful, much younger wife;
Mr. Patience, the irascible First Mate who has designs on the lady; Jim
Wales, the stout-hearted head apprentice and Tom's mentor; the snobbish
Mainprice, youngest of the apprentices; and Chardonnet, a mysterious
stowaway. McCutchan effectively and economically limns bustling
Liverpool, the daunting mission of beating around the Horn and Victorian
England's rigid caste system. Despite its sometimes excessive
jargon--"eased off the lee sheet, clewed the yard down and then hauled
up on the lee clewline and the bunt"--this spankingly paced novel augurs
well for Tom's further voyages. (Publishers Weekly)

The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London
A thrilling epic of a sea voyage and a complex novel of ideas, The
Sea-Wolf is a standard-bearer of its genre. It is the vivid story of a
gentleman scholar, Humphrey Van Weyden, who is rescued by a seal-hunting
schooner after a ferryboat accident in San Francisco Bay. London uses
Van Weyden's ordeal at the hands of a schooner's devious crew to explore
powerful themes of ambition, courage, and the innate will to survive.
The Sea-Wolf also introduces Jack London's most memorable, fully
realized character, Wolf Larsen, the schooner's brutal captain, who
ruthlessly crushes anyone standing in his way. As Gary Kinder states in
his Introduction, "Wolf Larsen is one of the most carefully carved
characters in American literature....London, himself, seems as
fascinated as the reader with his own creation." (amazon.com) (We have
this story available in a book titles Novels and Stories, by Jack
London)

Captain Blood, by Rafael Sabatini
Peter Blood, a physician and English gentleman, turned pirate out of a
rankling sense of injustice. Barely escaping the gallows after his
arrest for treating wounded rebels, Blood is enslaved on a Barbados
plantation. When he escapes, no ship sailing the Spanish Main is safe
from Blood and his men. This classic adventure is alive with color,
romance, and excitement and smoothly comments on the social injustices
of slavery, the dangers of intolerance, the power of love, the role of
fate, and the ways oppression can drive good men to desperate measures.
(amazon.com, Book Description)

The Rising Sun, by Douglas Galbraith
Roderick Mackenzie, the superintendant of cargoes for the ship The
Rising Sun, describes a daring expedition to establish a Scottish colony
in Central America, and the tragic consequences of the mission.
(NoveList)

The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd, by Richard Zacks
Captains Courageous, by Rudyard Kipling
Entertaining, richly detailed and authoritatively narrated, Zacks's
account of the life of legendary seaman William Kidd delivers a
first-rate story. Though Kidd, better known as Captain Kidd, was
inextricably bound with piracy and has popularly gone down as a
marauding buccaneer himself, Zacks (An Underground Education) argues
that he was actually a mercenary backed by the English government and
several New World investors to track down pirates and reclaim their
stolen wares. The book is cogent and replete with supporting evidence
without the heavy-handed feel of some scholarly work. What really sets
the book apart is Zacks's gift as researcher and storyteller. He
highlights the role of an undeniable pirate, Robert Culliford, in Kidd's
tale and pits the two men against each other from the outset,
constructing his book as an intriguing duel. Aside from the tightly
constructed plot, Zacks also wonderfully evokes the social and political
life of the 17th century at land and at sea, and he takes turns at
debunking and validating pirate folklore: while it appears the dead
giveaway of a skull and crossbones made it a rare flag choice, Zacks
contends that pirates did often wear extravagant clothing and were as
drunk, cursing, hungry, horny... and violent as myth would have them.
Augmented by such details and driven by a conflict between Kidd and
Culliford that keeps the pages flying, Zacks's book is a treasure,
indeed. (Publishers Weekly)

And let's not forget:

The Odyssey, by Homer

I hope you'll find something that you enjoy in this list.

Michele R. Brown
Reference Librarian