Featured Books

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Fighting Temeraire by Sam Willis

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Live Yankees: The Sewalls and Their Ships by W. H. Bunting

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His Majesty's Ship by Alaric Bond

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Galveston's the Elissa: The Tall Ship of Texas by Kurt Voss

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My River Chronicles - Rediscovering the America on the Hudson by Jessica DuLong

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The Frigate Surprise: The Complete Story of the Ship Made Famous in the Novels of Patrick O'Brian by by Geoff Hunt and Brian Lavery

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James Nelson's
George Washington's Secret Navy

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Defying Empire:Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York by Thomas Truxes

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Deadly Shoals, a Wiki Coffin Mystery by Joan Druett

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Star Crossed
by Linda Collison

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The Privateer's Revenge: A Kydd Sea Adventure (Kydd Sea Adventures)

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Peter Wicked: A Matty Graves Novel (The Matty Graves Novels)

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The Jackass Frigate by
Alaric Bond

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Steady As She Goes
by John Molloy

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Voyages, the Age of Sail: Documents in American Maritime History, Volume I, 1492-1865

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Expedition Whydah: The Story of the World's First Excavation of a Pirate Treasure Ship and the Man Who Found Her

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Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom--and Revenge

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The Illustrated Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

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Recent Comments

• CAPT. D. Peter Boucher, Dip.LA., MN (Ret.) on Little Brig – the Smallest Tall Ship
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• CAPT. D. Peter Boucher, Dip.LA. MN (Ret.) on Eustace the Monk – Benedictine Monk, Sea Captain, and Pirate
• Fisherman’s Friends Net Catchy Album Deal : Old Salt Blog – a virtual port of call for all those who love the sea on We’re Bound for South Australia
• Sabrina on Eustace the Monk – Benedictine Monk, Sea Captain, and Pirate
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• Rick on Gribbles? A Biofuel Breakthrough?

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Happy Birthday Horatio Hornblower

As Americans celebrate our Independence Day this July 4th, perhaps we should raise a glass to that most estimable fictional Naval officer, Horatio Hornblower, born on the same day as this new country, July 4th, 1776, in C.S. Forester’s eleven classic novels. 

Starting in 1937 and continuing through 1967, Cecil Scott Forester (the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith) created his eleven volume series of novels featuring Horatio Hornblower in his rise from midshipman to admiral.  Hornblower is a complicated and worthy character courageous and a skilled seaman troubled by an intense reserve and wracked by self-doubt.

Read more

From Lord Cochrane to the Wellington Hurricanes – the Evolution the Nautical Hero
Part 1. The Founder of our Feast – Thomas Cochrane

Joseph Campbell wrote in his The Hero with a Thousand Faces that all stories follow the ancient patterns of myth and legend. Whether the heroes of nautical fiction quite fit Campbell’s monomyths is open to question but there is no doubt that nautical fiction has had its own well established archetypes.

The greatest single archetype in nautical fiction is a character based on the career of Admiral Lord Cochrane. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower and O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey are based closely on Cochrane. Kent’s Admiral Bolitho and Pope’s Lord Ramage bear more than a passing resemblance.

Read more

Video of the Moment

HMS Surprise and Star of India

Also featuring the Californian
and the Lynx

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