The Dunnes have set off on a ten day boat trip, a trip that hopefully will bring them closer together, despite the fact that the father, Stuart is staying behind on land. But only an hour into the trip they're already falling apart. The teenage daughter plans to drown herself, and the teenage boy is high on drugs. Ten-year-old Ernie is near catatonic. But their mother Anne, with the help of her brother-in-law Jeff, is insistent on pulling everyone...

After being rescued by the crew of the Ghost, Humphrey Van Weyd becomes an unwilling sailor under Wolf Larsen's command.

The masterpiece of Joseph Conrad’s later years, the autobiographical short novel The Shadow-Line depicts a young man at a crossroads in his life, facing a desperate crisis that marks the “shadow-line” between youth and maturity.This brief but intense story is a dramatically fictionalized account of Conrad’s first command as a young sea captain trapped aboard a becalmed, fever-wracked, and seemingly haunted ship. With...

First published in 1914, "The Mutiny of the Elsinore" is a novel by American writer Jack London that centers around the death of a ship's captain and the ensuing conflict that arises as a result of a split in leadership and loyalty. The story is partially based on London's own experiences voyaging around Cape Horn on a ship called "The Dirigo" in 1912. John Griffith London (1876 – 1916), commonly known as Jack London, was an American journalist,...

The Blue Lagoon is the story of two cousins, Dicky and Emmeline Lestrange, stranded on a remote island with a beautiful lagoon. As children, they are cared for by Paddy Button, a portly sailor who drinks himself to death after only two and a half years in paradise. Frightened and confused by the man's gruesome corpse, the children flee to another part of Palm Tree Island. Over a period of five years, they grow up and eventually fall in love.

Retells the story of the ill-fated voyage of a whaling ship led by the fanatical Captain Ahab in search of the white whale that had crippled him

Almayer, an immigrant living on the Malayan continent with his native wife and his daughter, Nina, dreams of riches, and so pursues hidden gold mines and begins construction on a mansion to impress the British forces that he believes are coming to conquer the region. However, none of Almayer's schemes come through for him, and his recklessness results in a desperate situation for him and his family. Almayer's Folly was Joseph Conrad's first novel....

The captain of the HMS Bounty, William Bligh, was a competent seaman, but a harsh disciplinarian. This prompts his crew to mutiny, setting him adrift in the South Pacific. The crew returns to the tropical paradise of Tahiti, while Bligh survives an astounding journey back to England. This novel is based on the incredible true story.

The Rescue, A Romance of the Shallows (1920) is one of Joseph Conrad's works contained in what is now sometimes called the Lingard Trilogy, a group of novels based on Conrad's experience as mate on the steamer Vidar. Although it was the last of the three novels to be published, after Almayer's Folly (1895) and An Outcast of the Islands (1896), the events related in the novel precede those. The story follows Captain Tom Lingard, the recurring protagonist...

'Twixt Land and Sea (1912) contains three long stories written for magazines in the 1909-11 period. 'The Secret Sharer' is one of the great tales in the English language. All three tales explore a young captain under stress. Although in this period of renewed personal and financial turmoil Conrad's imagination turns nostalgically to life at sea, the sea is no longer the simplified world of 'Typhoon' or 'The End of the Tether', where moral distinctions...