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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A sea story is a work of fiction or non-fiction set largely at sea.
Contents |
[edit] Description
The enclosed setting of life aboard a ship allows an author to portray a social world in miniature, with characters cut off from the outside world and forced to interact in cramped and stressful conditions.
The form has been popular from Homer's Odyssey onwards.
[edit] Themes
Themes can include:
- Interpersonal difficulties and interactions:
- Differences between seamen and officers
- Bullying behavior
- Mutiny
- Bawdy liaisons with bar-girls in exotic locales
- Inter-ship difficulties, and ship goals:
- Piracy
- Naval activity and battles
- Commercial fishing
- Boat racing
- Natural difficulties:
- Struggles against treacherous weather and sea conditions
- Shipwrecks
- Explorations of inhospitable areas
[edit] Works
[edit] Novels
Notable exponents of the sea story include:
- William Cardell (1780–1828): The Story of Jack Halyard and other works
- Captain Frederick Marryat (1792–1848): Peter Simple
- Herman Melville (1819–1891): Moby-Dick
- Joseph Conrad (1857–1924): The Nigger of the 'Narcissus', Lord Jim, Typhoon, The Shadow Line, The Rescue
- Jack London (1876–1916): The Sea Wolf
- C. S. Forester (1899–1966): Horatio Hornblower series
- Nicholas Monsarrat (1910–1979): The Cruel Sea
- Patrick O'Brian (1914–2000): Aubrey–Maturin series
- Dudley Pope (1925–1997): Lord Ramage series
[edit] Novellas
Notable novellas include:
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961): The Old Man and the Sea
[edit] Periodicals
In the twentieth century, sea stories were popular subjects for the pulp magazines. Adventure [1] and Blue Book [2] often ran sea stories by writers such as J. Allan Dunn and H. Bedford-Jones as part of their selection of fiction. More specialized periodicals include:
- The Ocean, one of the first specialized pulp magazines (March 1907 to January 1908)[3]
- Sea Stories, a Street & Smith pulp (February 1922 to June 1930)
- Sea Novel Magazine, a Frank A. Munsey pulp (2 issues, November 1940, January 1941)
- Sea Story Annual and Sea Story Anthology, 1940's Street & Smith large-size reprint pulps
- Tales of the Sea, digest (Spring 1953)
[edit] References
- ^ Jones, Robert Kenneth. The Lure of Adventure. Starmont House,1989 ISBN 1557421439 (p.40)
- ^ Horace Vondys, Best Sea Stories from Bluebook, , introduced by Donald Kennicott. New York: The McBride Company, 1954.
- ^ "Lost at Sea: The Story of The Ocean," introduction to The Ocean: 100th Anniversary Collection (Off-Trail Publications, 2008).
