Love Two Years Before The Mast? Readers share 100 books like Two Years Before The Mast...

This book is a profound meditation on human resilience that never fails to move me. I'm constantly in awe of Hemingway's ability to weave so much meaning into such a deceptively simple tale. The way Santiago's unwavering determination shines through, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, resonates deeply with me.

I find myself returning to this book time and time again, drawing inspiration from the old man's quiet strength and dignity. The vivid portrayal of man's relationship with nature—both its beauty and its harsh realities—leaves me breathless. What I love most is how Hemingway captures the essence of the human spirit in Santiago's struggle, reminding me that true victory lies not in the outcome but in the perseverance of the journey.

As a kid, I was hooked on the vast wide-open freedom of this story. The notions of hidden treasure maps, buried fortunes, stealthy smugglers and dangerous pirates affected me in profoundly positive ways, stimulating a wanderlust and a love of adventure.

Although Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson set this swashbuckling tale on the south coast of England and on the elusive “Treasure Island” in the Caribbean, it was inspired by his childhood experiences in Scotland, most notably trips with his dad to rocky islands and promontories (RLS’s father was a lighthouse engineer who designed and built many iconic lighthouses).

When my father took the five-year-old me to The Admiral Benbow en route to a family holiday in Cornwall, I was amazed to find that the inn was a real place. It felt bristlingly alive to me, for this was the same inn where Billy Bones had lodged with the treasure… show more.

On his way into exile on Elba in HMS Undaunted, Napoleon Bonaparte, remarked on the conduct of British sailors, how silently and efficiently they went about their duties. It is true that discipline on British warships was strict, and punishment for offenders was harsh from flogging to hanging. However, contrary to some opinions, British seamen on the whole were happy with their lot. They were well-fed and were fairly treated. The maxim ‘train hard fight easy’ was prevalent with British sailors, this novelette undoubtedly reflects this attitude.

The Billy Budd story, set aboard HMS Bellipotent, is a microcosm of life in general; Duty, Patriotism, Envy, Camaraderie, Conspiracy, Jealousy, Justice, and Punishment. I have faced a similar dilemma that faced Captain Vere myself, although not a life and death decision, but having the choice of turning a blind eye to an offence against the Discipline Regulations or prosecuting the offender resulting in… show more.

In 2007, I was writing a biography of Liverpool merchant William Davenport, who had made his fortune via the slave trade.

As I researched Davenport’s dry ledgers and letterbooks, I was fortunate to have Marcus Rediker’s exceptional The Slave Ship to hand. Pushing back against the “violence of abstraction” inherent to the accounts of slavers like Davenport, Rediker’s book exposed the horrors of the Middle Passage in unflinching detail.

His book is also filled with powerful individual stories of captives, captains, and crewmen that demonstrated to me the importance of writing “human histories” of the slave trade.

Because the nineteenth-century sailing ship was such a male-dominated space, women were largely invisible in traditional histories of life at sea. Although Edith Ziegler’s book does not simply focus on the voyage itself (it includes analysis of female convicts’ lives before and after the journey as well), it does show how women combatted the “sexual opportunism and exploitation” that was endemic on convict transports. What’s great about this book is that even though many of its subjects were illiterate (and thus left precious few letters and diaries behind), Ziegler manages to unearth the women’s voices in authentic and moving ways.

Washington Irving once famously described a long sea voyage as a “blank page in existence.” Stephen Berry’s analysis of James Oglethorpe’s Georgia Expedition, which sailed from England to colonial Georgia in 1735, shows that the opposite was true. Rather than merely serve as the stage on which the human drama of migration played out, the sea voyage was a dynamic actor in the experience itself. Far from land, migrants had time and space to reconsider their views on society, religion, and identity in ways that shaped their new lives in America.

I love this story because, for me, it’s a perfect example of why a ship is such a great platform for storytelling, a moving stage for a compelling cast of characters to act out the drama of their past and present lives while heading into an uncertain future.

The Star of the Sea is a "coffin ship," the name given to the leaking hulks that transported a million emigrants from Ireland to America during the Great Famine of the 1840s.

It’s a historical novel but for me, a timeless story about emigration and the human condition, of refugees fleeing the monsters of their past, war, famine, disease, whatever, into what they hope will be a brighter future, and of what happens to them on the way.

Although this is a novel about a warship and the convoys, the Artic Convoys to North Russia were very real. Winston Churchill said the artic convoy mission was, "The most dangerous journey in the world." I personally sailed with men who had sailed in these convoys taking food, fuel, and weapons to Russia. I sailed with seamen whose ships had been torpedoed by U-Boats, some men had been torpedoed more than once.

I was only 3 years old when the war ended but I have sailed to the Artic and to Vladivostok in the North Pacific, and I have worked on deep sea trawlers fishing off the north coast of Iceland and I can tell you that working at sea, even in peacetime, can be a very dangerous occupation. In wartime life at sea must have been terrifying at times. Now in the comfort of my central-heated house, I pay… show more.

This is a beautiful little book in an interesting format—a single image per page—that tells the story of a poet whose romanticizing about life on the sea is put to the test when he’s shanghaied and made part of a crew of sailors heading for Hong Kong. Don’t be fooled by Drew’s stunning cartooning that evokes the glory of the heyday of newspaper cartooning (think E.C. Segar, Walt Kelly, etc.); this is a book for grown-ups. 

Sailors — among my favorite books — is a vivid account of the lives of English merchant seamen in the 17th and 18th centuries. These were the years when England rose to dominance in global commerce and became the greatest naval power in the world. Acclaimed historian Peter Earle explores every aspect of the sailor's life: conditions of service, wealth and possessions, life aboard ship, the perils of the sea, discipline and punishment, sickness, desertion, mutiny and mortality, and the role of the sailor in times of war. Evocative, scholarly, and colorful, this story of England's "bravest and boldest" reveals how life on the waves was not all storms and conflict, tyranny and revolt, but also one of comradeship, adventure, and love of the sea.