Nautical Fiction

Written on Water; Literature of the Sea in the Age of Sail

"My dear Louis. You are too far away — you are too absent, too invisible ... friendship is too delicate a matter for such tricks — for cutting great gory masses out of 'em ... Therefore come back. Hang it all — sink it all and come back. A little more and I shall cease to believe in you... Your adventures, no doubt, are wonderful... ."

— Henry James, writing to Robert Louis Stevenson in 1888

"This online exhibition is based on an exhibition of nautical materials at Indiana University's Lilly Library. It attempts to offer a small sampling of the wide variety of books and manuscripts dealing with ships and the sea during a time before steam-powered vessels. National boundaries and personal fortunes alike depended on wooden ships propelled by wind and canvas sails; the voyages themselves were often fraught with danger and physical difficulty. It is no surprise, then, that a vast body of nautical literature was produced during the period, from practical treatises aimed at improving ships' performance to imaginative stories of the mystery and danger of the open sea."

The Lilly Library at Indiana University's online Nautical Fiction exhibition contains files on Homer's Odyssey, Daniel Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner; Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island; and Joseph Conrad's Typhoon and Other Stories ... among others.

The other sections of the exhibit include Practical Seamanship, War at Sea, Nautical Hardships and a subject that has become to the forefront again in the last years, Piracy.

Nautical Hardships includes the following:

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Sad Nevvs from the Sea, Being a True Relation of the Losse of That Good Ship Called the Merchant Royall Which Was Cast Away Ten Leagues from the Lands End on Thursday Night Being the 23 of Septemb. Last, 1641. [London?],1641.

"On a return trip from Spain, the English ship the Merchant Royall sprung a leak below the waterline. When the chains for both of the ship's pumps broke, the crew realized that the ship would soon sink. According to this pamphlet, the Merchant Royall was loaded at the time with "300000 pound in ready boloigne [bullion], 100000 pound in gold, and as much value in Iewels". The crew and passengers were rescued by a nearby vessel, but the treasure went down with the ship. The loss was felt so deeply by the captain of the Merchant Royall that upon landing on shore, he "repaired to his house and family, and will not be seene or spoken with (as yet) by any his griefe is so great". The illustration used on the title page was copied from William Bourne's A Regiment for the Sea (1577), although it was altered to remove the original coats of arms on the sails."

The Piracy page includes: "Alexandre Exquemelin spent twelve years among pirates serving as a surgeon, and this work is considered the most important early history of piracy. Originally published in Dutch in 1678, it was soon translated into a number of languages and reached a public that was hungry for stories of pirates and privateers. The distinction between the two classes is often imprecise, but essentially privateers acted during times of war under the recognition of a national government (which granted 'letters of marque' authorizing their holders to capture ships of hostile nations) but outside the confines of an established navy."

"Although piracy has attained a veneer of romanticism, Exquemelin makes no effort to conceal the frequent barbarities he witnessed among the pirates. The pages exhibited here depict the pirate Francis L'Ollonais, whom one author has described as 'so utterly base that it would be impossible for anyone to look upon him as a hero'. "

Written on Water; Literature of the Sea in the Age of Sail

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