Sea Adventures Books

A Voyage for Madmen

Peter Nichols

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Truly a race for madmen 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

A reviewer described this book as a study in abnormal psychology. Having now completed this story I can only agree with him.

In many ways the story told reminds me of "into thin air" by John Krakauer, in that it asks what drives seemingly ordinary human beings to willing pit themselves against the elements in circumstances which can easily lead to their death. In this case the author asks what would possess nine sailors to undertake to sail around the world non-stop in an age before GPS navigation, Ultralight and tough building materials and satellite phones. An era when boats were constructed of steel and teak, where radio communications were unreliable and navigation a matter of charts and sextants.

The nine challengers proved to be a diverse group, from professional sailors, to electrical engineers to soldier adventures with no previous experience at sea, and the final results reflected this starting point with withdrawals, failure and in extreme cases insanity and death. In the end the final winner was the man who was most at home at sea, a simple man whose only weakness appeared to be that he lacked the imagination necessary to fully grasp the horrors that he faced on the journey.

Overall a classic true life adventure tale.

Editorial Review:

In 1968, nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. It was a feat that had never been accomplished and one that would forever change the face of sailing. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death.

In this extraordinary book, Peter Nichols chronicles a contest of the individual against the sea, waged at a time before cell phones, satellite dishes, and electronic positioning systems. A Voyage for Madmen is a tale of sailors driven by their own dreams and demons, of horrific storms in the Southern Ocean, and of those riveting moments when a split-second decision means the difference between life and death.

Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival

Carl Safina

Amazon Price: $11.56 List Price: $17.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Holt Paperbacks Amazon Marketplace: 46 new & used starting at $1.97

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Fantastic - a must read! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Brilliant, poignant and often painful. A must read! Beautifully written tale of the various species of albatross, whose survival is increasingly vulnerable to modern conditions and the willingness of homo sapiens (so-called) to change their behavior so that others may live. The story is one of struggle, hope, the power of sheer persistence and of life's resilience under increasingly bleak conditions. More generally, the book is an overview of the devastation of the ocean environment. "Eye of the Albatross" was the well-deserving winner of the 1993 John Burroughs Medal for distinguished natural hitory writing.

Safina's latest piece of natural history brilliance is "Voyage of the Turtle: In pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur" (2006). Safina is president of Blue Ocean Institute, which he co-founded in 2003, so he's putting his prodigious talent to work to make the world a better place.

By Kyle Gardner, author of Medicine Rock Reflections

Editorial Review:

“One of the most delightful natural history studies in decades.” —The Boston GlobeEye of the Albatross takes us soaring to locales where whales, sea turtles, penguins, and shearwaters flourish in their own quotidian rhythms. Carl Safina’s guide and inspiration is an albatross he calls Amelia, whose life and far-flung flights he describes in fascinating detail. Interwoven with recollections of whalers and famous explorers, Eye of the Albatross probes the unmistakable environmental impact of the encounters between man and marine life. Safina’s perceptive and authoritative portrait results in a transforming ride to the ends of the Earth for the reader, as well as an eye-opening look at the health of our oceans.

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

List Price: $3.50 By: Charles Scribner's & Sons Amazon Marketplace: 32 new & used starting at $1.08

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Sea Novel 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This is about an old man's determination to catch a fish. In the story of the old man and the sea, a man shows that he can do what he sets out to do. The story shows his strong will and struggle against the weather, fatigue, pain and other elements that he encountered while at sea.
In the story, Santiago said, "A man can be destroyed, not defeated." I really like this statement. I think it is true. He faught to the end. Even when the sharks attacked his fish, he didn't give up. He still tried to protect the fish. He uses every method that he can think of not to be defeated by his enemy.
The old man called the sea "la mar" which is masculine. He liked fishing and baseball. What I like about the old man is his dream. He always dreams about a lion. It's in a beautiful gold sea in Africa. I say I like it because not very many people dream about such beautiful places.
In the end, the old man did catch the fish and made it back to his village. However, his physical conditionwas nearly distroyed. With his determination, he proved to the people of the village, the boy and himself that he was able to accomplish his dream in "La mar."

Havoc's Sword: An Alan Lewrie Naval Adventure

Dewey Lambdin

Amazon Price: $10.85 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: St. Martin's Griffin Amazon Marketplace: 42 new & used starting at $7.29

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Dewey Lambdin's lovable but incorrigible rogue, Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is back to cut a wide and wicked swatch through the war-torn Caribbean in an entirely new high seas adventure.

It's 1798, and Lewrie and his crew of the Proteus frigate have their work cut out for them. First, he has rashly vowed to uphold a friend's honour in a duel to the death. Second, he faces the horridly unwelcome arrival of HM Government's Foreign Office agents (out to use him as their cat's-paw in impossibly vaunting schemes against the French). And last, he must engineer the showdown with his arch foe and nemesis, the hideous ogre of the French Revolution's Terror, that clever fiend Guillaume Choundas!

We know Lewrie can fight, but can he be a diplomat, too? He must deal with the newly reborn United States Navy, that uneasy, unofficial "ally", and the stunning, life-altering surprise they bring. For good or ill, Lewrie's in the "quag" up to his neck, this time. Can sword, pistol, and broadsides avail, or will words, low cunning, and Lewrie's irrepressible wit be the key to his victory and survival, as even the seas cry "Havoc"?

Sharpe's Trafalgar: Richard Sharpe & the Battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805 (Richard Sharpe's Adventure Series #4)

Bernard Cornwell

List Price: $25.00 By: HarperCollins Amazon Marketplace: 44 new & used starting at $0.90

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 46 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

For military-history buffs, Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels are the literary equivalent of potato chips: you can't read just one. And in this case, why would you want to? Blending meticulous research and old-fashioned entertainment, the series follows the roguish adventurer Richard Sharpe as he swashbuckles his way through the Napoleonic Wars. In Sharpe's Trafalgar, the author ventures into Patrick O'Brian's maritime territory. Anchors aweigh, lads, and bring on the detailed descriptions of the ship's guns and their firing mechanisms!

In the beginning of the book, our hero sets sail for England after five months of service in India. The plot revolves around a disguised diplomat, a marauding French warship, and an improbable love affair with a comely English aristocrat. But make no mistake, the real draw here is combat. The battle scenes crackle with energy, and we can practically feel the chop of the waves and smell the reek of gunpowder. (We can also smell 600 unwashed men in close quarters with rats, sewage, and bilge rot, but that's another matter entirely.) The last hundred pages fly by at a furious clip, cannons pounding and cutlasses hacking, as Cornwell re-creates the naval battle of Trafalgar.

These days, of course, we know that war is bloody and brutal, not honorable or fair. We like even our most appealing warriors to have some passing acquaintance with their dark side, and Sharpe does take a decidedly antiheroic stance on the experience of hand-to-hand combat:

He was ashamed when he remembered the joy of it, but there was a joy there. It was the happiness of being released to the slaughter, of having every bond of civilization removed. It was also what Richard Sharpe was good at. It was why he wore an officer's sash instead of a private's belt, because in almost every battle the moment came when the disciplined ranks dissolved and a man simply had to claw and scratch and kill like a beast.

Beast or no beast, Sharpe is far more interesting and complex than the musket-wielding action figure he might first appear. And it's nearly impossible not to take some pleasure at his bloody exploits. Sharpe's Trafalgar is a superb example of the ripping good yarn--it confirms our secret conviction that war may be hell, but it's actually pretty exciting too. --Mary Park

The Keeper's Son (Josh Thurlow Series #1)

Homer Hickam

List Price: $24.95 By: Thomas Dunne Books Amazon Marketplace: 52 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 42 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 1941, Killakeet Island of the wind-swept Outer Banks of North Carolina is home to a tiny, peaceful population of fishermen, clam stompers, oyster rakers, and a few lonely sailors of the Coast Guard. Dominating the glorious, raw beauty of the little island is the majestic Killakeet Lighthouse, which for generations has been the responsibility of one family, the Thurlows.

However, Josh Thurlow, the Keeper's son, has forsworn his heritage to become the commander of the Maudie Jane, a small Coast Guard patrol boat operating off Killakeet. Josh is still tortured by guilt, seventeen years after losing his baby brother at sea. Then his life is complicated by the arrival of the beautiful Dosie Crossan, who has journeyed to lonely Killakeet to escape the outside world and perhaps find a purpose in life. While Josh's heart is stirred by the often-vexing Dosie, he continues his search for his brother, even after a wolfpack of German U-boats arrives to soak the island's beaches with blood and oil.

One of the U-boats is captained by Otto Krebs, a famed and ruthless undersea warrior. Krebs, a man also scarred by lost love, comes to Killakeet, however, with more than torpedoes and plans for war: He may also have the answer to the mystery that haunts Josh Thurlow.

The Keeper's Son is a rousing, romantic tale of the power of the human heart forever searching for redemption.

Hunters of the Dark Sea

Mel Odom

List Price: $24.95 By: Tor Books Amazon Marketplace: 23 new & used starting at $2.60

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

They were the whalers of the nineteenth century, leaving home for months, nay years at a time, in search of the largest creatures of the earth. It was their job to hunt these mammoth sea dwellers for their oil and feed the trade in hopes of raising enough coin to feed their families back in port. They are the hunters of the dark sea, in search of the deadly behemoth that is their stock and trade. It is a life and death profession where even the greenest member of the crew knows the odds of survival . . . until these odds are changed by an even deadlier hunter than themselves: an unearthly predator that is now stalking them.

"Smartly told," "a surefire pageturner," "Mel Odom really knows how to keep a reader turning pages," are only some of the accolades bestowed on award-winning author Mel Odom. Turning his attention away from his usual fantasy kingdoms to the high seas of the nineteenth century in this pageturning adventure of the whaling trade, Odom combines the suspense of Alien with the historical storytelling of Caleb Carr and Michael Crichton.

Birds of Prey (Courtney Family Adventures)

Wilbur Smith

List Price: $14.95 By: St. Martin's Griffin Amazon Marketplace: 27 new & used starting at $0.58

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 84 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Stereotypical adventure genre 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This was my first Wilbur Smith book. I thought it was all right for an adventure genre. There is enough historical research to add color. And it certainly moves along well. Many of the events are not believable, but you can say the same for James Bond. The book jumps between history and legend easily and superficially. Boys grow into manhood overnight. Women fall deeply in love by seeing someone from afar. Crocodiles are much more aggressive than in real life. But it is easy reading for passing a few hours.

Editorial Review:

Look up "classic adventure novel" in the dictionary and you'll find the strong and capable features of South Africa's own Wilbur Smith, who--in books as varied and enjoyable as River God, The Seventh Scroll, When the Lion Feeds, and The Diamond Hunters--displays an awesome storytelling ability. His latest is one of his best efforts: a richly detailed story of war and piracy on the high seas in 1667, 150 years before Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin books.

Punk's War

Ward Carroll

List Price: $6.99 By: Signet Amazon Marketplace: 86 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Real Naval Aviation 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Ward Carroll has done a masterful job of making the complex job of flying sophisticated jets in a dangerous and challenging environment understandable for uninitiated while keeping the story moving and exciting for those who have worked or lived with it. It is filled with characters that get to know and care about. GREAT read

Punk's War and His series 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Now you're talking! As a surface sailor who served in carriers, this was educational, factual, interesting, and entertaining. Ward Carroll takes the reader into the Ready Room, describes characters we've all known or experienced, and introduces the reader to all phases of life aboard the "boat."
Carroll's books are the best of any military writer I've read.
Where's the movie?

Editorial Review:

This is the real Navy, as seen through the eyes of a veteran pilot. Set on a carrier in the Persian Gulf, this "remarkably honest"* book introduces us to Navy Lieutenant Rick "Punk" Reichert, who loves flying more than anything-even if his life is turning into one big dogfight.

"For readers of military fiction who want some brains with their boom." (*Baltimore Sun)

"Like Top Gun on steroids." (Publishers Weekly)

"Rousing...a convincing, often amusing, surprisingly unflinching account." (Kirkus Reviews)