Wait, let me dig through the drawer. I know I have it someplace. Here it is in nice bold letters -- my degree in aquatic biology. Yeah, that's right, I've always loved the sea. Loved the salt spray in my face and the song of the whales and the... what's that? That little word after aquatic biology? Don't pay attention to that. Not important. Back to those whales, you know when I was studying, I... I don't know what you mean, there's nothing important there. Sheesh, okay. So it says "Aquatic Biology (nonmarine)."
As it happens I earned my degree from Murray State University, which has a very nice station on Kentucky Lake, but is about as far from salt water as you can be in this country. Of course, that's not strictly true. You could be in St. Louis, where I moved after college, and where I've been parked for the last three decades. So the truth is I am not, nor have I ever been an expert on anything about the sea. I've never studied whales, or sharks, or coral reefs. Never crewed a tall ship. Or short ship. The truth is, I've never even tested my mettle at the helm of a Sunfish skimming across a pond on a windy day.
Except in my dreams.
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C. S. Forester
Watching this gangly kid getting rowed out to his ship you can see right away that he's a poor fit for the world he's entering. He's too old to be a midshipman. Completely out of his element. Heck, he even gets seasick while the ship is still at anchor. But give him another twenty pages and you'll see why he's going to make it -- and why Horatio Hornblower has been popular since 1937. It's not that he's the most daring man in the Navy. Instead, Hornbower is reserved and thoughtful. He's the guy who is quietly one step ahead of everyone else in his thinking -- and ready to act not out of raw courage, but from a necessity that no one else has yet put together. This book was not the first written. The series actually started with Hornblower already a captain. It was over a decade later that Forester went back to create this tale of Hornblower's first days in the service (don't bother trying to put all the books in sequence, I'll tell you that there are gaps, overlaps, and contradictions). There are also some flaws in Forester's presentation of the British Navy during the Napoleonic era. But who cares. The emphasis here is on story and character -- which is what I want from a book. For me, this is Hornblower at his best. As he progresses through the ranks, his opinions become more fixed, his attitude more blunt. In this book, Hornblower is still raw enough to make plenty of mistakes -- and sharp enough to learn from them.
HMS Suprise by Patrick O'Brian
Frankly, I don't like Jack Aubrey, the captain of O'Brian's long running sea series. I think Aubrey is an ass at the outset, and just as big an ass in the final book. I don't mind a book with a flawed main character, but Aubrey is someone I'd rather punch than follow, no matter how many victories he runs up at sea. So when I tell you I still read all the books in the series, you'll understand that despite my problems with Lucky Jack, there has to be something here that kept me coming back. In the case of O'Brian that something is authenticity. The ships, the situations, the actions at sea and the political wrangling on shore all show the peerless job the author did in recreating this world. I won't kid you -- I'm a Hornblower fan to the end, but when I need something of this period for my own work, I don't hesitate to treat O'Brian's work with the authority I'd give an encyclopedia.
On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
When I saw the previews for the first Pirates of the Caribbean, I was convinced that someone was making a film from this book. As it turns out, that will be Pirates movie #4. However the film turns out, the book is a series of adventures on sea and on land that are both colorful and chilling. Powers' premise is magic is destroyed by iron. In Europe, where iron making has gone on for millennia, the last bits of magic are all but gone. But in the Caribbean and along the wild costs of America, the world is very, very strange indeed. The story moves from piracy on the seas to a bizarre trek through Florida in search of the Fountain of Youth, and the action through the whole book is enough to remind you of a deck pitching in a storm.
Midshipman's Hope by David Feintuch
Finally, how about a sea story in which there is no sea? The UNS Hibernia is not an ocean-going vessel, instead it's a massive starship delivering colonists to a planet in a voyage that takes over a year. For Midshipman Nicholas Seafort, the early part of the journey is about learning his place on board the ship -- a ship whose social structure is very consciously modeled after the British Navy of Hornblower and Aubrey. Seafort takes his lumps (literally) in the wardroom, and has barely begun his career when a devastating accident takes out a good portion of those on board the Hibernia, including all of the ship's senior officers. Left to command a damaged ship filled with hundreds of terrified passengers, Seafort faces tough decisions if there is any chance of bringing Hibernia to the end of its journey. Feintuch clearly modeled not just his space navy, but the structure of his book on Hornblower's adventures, and at times it has feel of a set of connected shorts rather than a satisfying whole. But overall this is a romp with enough mutiny and mayhem to satisfy any old salt.