The most recommended maritime books

I love primary sources and histories that reproduce them. Here is another amazing feat of historical detection. “Details have been taken from eye-witness accounts; original Certificates of Registration, paintings, and contemporary lithograph drawings have been reproduced,” may sound dry but this book is alive with the voices of immigrants telling both tragic and triumphant tales. Anyone whose Irish ancestors came to North America between 1846 and 1851 will want to examine the numerous passenger lists that Laxton includes. I think of this book and all it taught me when I visit my hometown and stop by the monument commemorating Irish immigrants on the shore of Lake Ontario.

I am in awe of Charlotte McConaghy’s skill—both at crafting beautiful prose and using the length of her novel to unfold the story of its main character (I have now seen her do this twice).

In a world in which many animals are extinct, Franny is on an obsessive mission to follow the migration of the last Arctic terns. It takes the course of the novel to understand Franny’s motivation, given to the reader in pieces and thereby made somewhat of a puzzle. Franny is a complex character, and coming to understand her and why she identifies with the terns offered me a sense of gratification.

McConaghy’s ability to connect her character’s personal peril to another species’ ecological peril rings authentic.

Fast-paced, exciting, with enough twists to keep me reading without a single break – this is one of my all-time favourites by prolific author Alistair MacLean. I found myself chuckling and, in the next instant, holding my breath as the First Officer has to outwit terrorists who have taken over the tramp carrier cum cruise ship “Campari.” But what I enjoy most is the mix of humour and lightheartedness that balance the high octane thrills which are grounded in meticulous research.

This really is a gem of a book. The reader is left guessing whether it is a memoir, auto-fiction, or stand-alone fiction. From its deceptively simple beginning, it cleverly deals with so many of life's big issues with a thoughtful lightness of touch. The book is written from the perspective of grown-up Michael, but Ondaatje explores the confusion and frustration of the child who was made to sail halfway around the world to a new home and the subsequent impact the journey has on the adult Michael. 

This novel gave me such great insight into the immigrant experience of the Irish in the mid-nineteenth century.

The reality of the voyage over for the poor clashes sharply with the reality for the wealthy. The plot involves a mystery, a love story, and a mysterious person seeking revenge, all of which kept me up late at night reading. 

I love this book because of its reference to a higher reality and to the idea that life itself and all its details can be read as symbolic metaphors for reality.

After the boat carrying Pi’s family and their zoo animals from India to Canada sinks. Pi floats adrift for 277 days before he’s rescued from his lifeboat, where he experiences extreme distress and fear for his life.

When he presents two different versions of his experience to his rescuers, who must write an official report, his rescuers must assess which of his versions contains the “truth” in the same way we gravitate between surface meanings and underlying ones.

Professor Laleh Khalili provides an absolutely riveting account of the transformation of the Gulf region, where the U.S. fifth fleet has operated since the 1990s, into a hub of world commerce in oil and arms. She argues that the lines between civilian and military logistics have grown increasingly blurred. To prove it, she takes us aboard the container ships, detours back to the time when British firms and government agencies ruled, explores the ports and free zones, follows the rails and roads, and uncovers the complex labor relations that make war and trade possible. 

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.

It’s a true story that reads like a mystery, thriller, and yet was an actual historical event.

There were so many little things that could have gone differently that would have changed the ultimate outcome for the Lusitania. It’s like a metaphor for life – small differences can result in huge outcomes…sometimes wonderful, sometimes terrible.

I loved it because of the intrigue, the rich character descriptions, and how it reminded me of Greek tragedies with the “hubris” of many of those involved in the ship’s ultimate fate. I was immersed in a fascinating history lesson, story, and character study all in one well-researched and well-written book. It was a nonfiction book that read like a thriller.

This wordless picture book uses gorgeous collage art to soften the frightening story of a wartime escape from Vietnam. The use of ants as a refugee metaphor, and the intertwined wordless stories of ants with a fleeing human family, may make the story a bit complex for very young readers. But the lack of text, in this case, makes it a perfect read-together book and conversation starter. It is a story of hope, courage, and kindness, which are key pillars for refugees to survive and thrive. Separately, we all tend to focus on the biggest, most current, refugee crises (and there are many!). Yet children should also hear refugee stories from around the world and through history. What do these journeys have in common? What makes them unique? What can we learn?

A page-turning, true-life adventure! The story is told in first-person verse by 13-year-old Ken Sparks whose parents send him from England to Canada at the start of the Blitz as part of the British government’s ill-fated child evacuee program. Five days into the crossing, his ship, the SS Benares, is torpedoed by a German U-Boat, and as it sinks fast, Ken finds himself in a lifeboat with five other boys fighting for their lives. I read this book and loved it from page one. Although they come from very different backgrounds, Ken and Käfer share endearing qualities: pluck, resourcefulness, and a child’s optimistic view of the world. All of which stand them in good stead.

In my previous life, I would have loved to have traveled with my wife in one of the great ocean liners in their heyday. The glorious food, fine wines, and the general ambiance are wonderfully evoked in this book, and a well-chosen selection of recipes, contemporary photographs, and original menu cards enhances the text.

Your decision will be just what recipe to try first.

I can’t help it, I am an absolute sucker for a girl dressing up as a boy. It’s a classic trope in lesbian fiction, and while it’s reminiscent of trans masculine narratives, it’s also a fantastical reflection of butch/femme dynamics, and these two things can co-exist in the literary world. Flora/Florian is a really special protagonist, and her relationship with Evelyn is as exciting as the overall story. Tokuda-Hall has clearly had so much fun weaving in a variety of fantasy elements, throwing us mermaids, witches, pirates, and, of course, the Sea. 

Dickens wrote this essay, which is one of his very best pieces of non-fictional writing, at a period when he was undergoing something of a crisis, largely because of the breakdown of his marriage. It describes a walk he took at night through the streets of London, though in fact it is probably a composite of many nocturnal strolls he took in the late 1850s. Although the piece is sharpened with Dickens’s characteristic spirit of satire, it is remarkable for the sympathetic warmth with which it sketches those who, in contrast to Dickens himself, have no choice but to inhabit the city at night – the lost, the lonely, the homeless. Movingly, he finds a sense of community in these isolated individuals who live on the margins of society.

The Motion of the Ocean has been a longtime favorite sailing memoir of mine, not in the least because I read it during my own sailing years and felt connected to the author.

I appreciate her humorous, honest, conversational, and compelling writing style and love the title of the book, which inspired me to keep adventuring by sailboat and even to write my own memoir.

The narrative focuses on Janna and her husband’s relationship on a small boat in a remote area of the world. It’s a story not unlike mine in regards to relationship idiosyncrasies, the Pacific territory, the couple’s ages, and some of their experiences.

Janna was a teacher in a previous life as well and shares my love for travel and writing. This is an entertaining, well-written book.

Carolyn Hart is one of those cozy mystery writers who effortlessly reel me into their world. Set Sail for Murder satisfies my longing for travel with its itinerary and the lush vivid descriptions, as well as having an enjoyable mystery at its core. As a former journalist, I’m also a sucker for retired reporters turned sleuth. I read this first on a train, and it made the hours fly by. As soothing as the sound of waves gently lapping a boat. 

If you’ve ever wanted to take an Alaskan cruise, The Unsinkable Greta James is the perfect book for you.

The sights are breathtaking, the cruise culture is endearingly infectious, but it’s with the characters where this novel truly sings. And I don’t only mean that metaphorically speaking: the titular protagonist Greta James is a famous indie musician who has followed her career to great success, despite her father’s discouragement of the unstable path.

When Greta’s mother unexpectedly passes away, she decides to take her mom’s spot on the Alaskan cruise that her parents had booked to celebrate their anniversary. Over the course of the trip, Greta and her father must reconcile their differences, grieve their aching loss, and find a way back to each other.

This book focuses on the golden era of Transatlantic travel in the Twentieth Century when engines made sail no longer a variable. Ships were larger and accommodation more spacious and opulent. The author is particularly good at describing the details of little-appreciated shipboard life such as gambling and the professional gamblers who fleeced wealthy participants.

A confession—this book was the cornerstone in my appreciation of the history of Transatlantic passenger shipping. First published in 1972, it has been reprinted in both hardcover and softcover many times since. My hardcover edition has a good section of relevant pictures with captions to tie them into the text, and a chart spreadsheet inside the front cover of the lines and their ships through the decades of the century.

Lots of interesting narrative and useful pictures. What’s more to want in a book to be read for pleasure?

The “coffin ship” is a haunting metaphor for the catastrophe that struck Ireland in the 1840s and 1850s, when more than 1 million people died of starvation and disease and another 2 million people emigrated.

In this deeply researched and beautifully written book, Cian McMahon accomplishes two main goals. First, he disentangles the myth of the “coffin ship” from the reality. Shipboard mortality, he finds, was generally low, yet on some fully one-quarter of the passengers perishing in the worst cases.

Second, McMahon fills in a huge gap in emigration history—which usually explains why people leave home and then takes up the story again when they arrive in America—by showing how emigrants grappled with life and death on board ships and built community in the process.

William Golding surpassed his Lord of the Flies with these novels about a sea voyage to Australia in the early 19th century on a former man-of-war crammed with passengers and crew. In it he explores his usual theme—all that is good and (mostly) bad in human nature and how savagery can so easily erupt.  

Something dark happens in the cramped confines below deck, linked to Reverend Colley, an unhappy on-ship acquaintance of the young aristocrat, Edmund Talbot, who narrates the story via his diaries. 

Talbot sorts the dark secret to his own satisfaction but that’s an unreliable narrator for you! A dark cloud still hangs over the ship, despite some lightness, especially as the old vessel may flounder before it reaches Australia. Stunning—and stunning evocation of shipboard life.