Marlow@Sea · Salty Library & Rituals

Salty Library

Atlantic Storm, John Singer Sargent

Atlantic Storm — John Singer Sargent

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off, then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

— Herman Melville

Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.

— Joseph Conrad

The cure for anything is saltwater – sweat, tears, or the sea.

— Isak Dinesen

The sea hates a coward.

— Eugene O'Neill

Man marks the earth with ruin – his control stops with the shore.

— Byron

The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

— Edward Gibbon

So people to a steamer at sea talk and laugh carelessly, for all the world as though they were on dry land; but let only the slightest hitch occur, and at once on every face there comes out an expression of peculiar alarm.

— Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

Soger — The worst term of reproach that can be applied to a sailor. It signifies a skulk, a shirk — one who is always trying to get clear of work, and is out of the way or hanging back when duty is to be done.

Art of the Sailor — The meaning of the traditional nautical tattoo

Useful books to prepare for trials at sea

  • Sod's Law of the Sea — Bill Lucas, Andrew Spedding
  • Youth — Joseph Conrad
  • Two Girls, Two Catamarans — James Wharram
  • My Old Man and the Sea — David Hays & Daniel Hays
  • Sailing Alone Around The World — Joshua Slocum
  • A Voyage for Madmen — Peter Nichols
  • Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage — Alfred Lansing
  • The New New Thing, Chapter 1 — Michael Lewis
  • Moby Dick — Herman Melville
  • In the Heart of the Sea — Nathaniel Philbrick
  • Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad
  • Lord Jim — Joseph Conrad
  • Typhoon — Joseph Conrad
  • Chance — Joseph Conrad
  • Seven Plays of the Sea — Eugene O'Neill
  • Kidnapped — Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Atlantic High — William F. Buckley
  • Airborne — William F. Buckley
  • 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea — Jules Verne
  • The Odyssey — Homer
  • The Aeneid — Virgil
  • Horatio Hornblower — C.S. Forester
  • World Cruising Routes — Jimmy Cornell
  • Boatowner's Mechanical and Electrical Manual — Nigel Calder
  • Chapman Piloting and Seamanship
  • The American Practical Navigator — Nathaniel Bowditch
  • A Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast — Hank and Jan Taft, Curtis Rindlaub
  • Lycidas — John Milton
  • Dido, Queen of Carthage — Christopher Marlowe
  • Salammbo — Gustave Flaubert
  • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • The Sea Around Us — Rachel Carson
  • The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World — Maya Jasanoff
  • Two Years Before the Mast — Richard Henry Dana
  • Galapagos — Kurt Vonnegut

From the canon

It lies not in our power to love, or hate, For will in us is over-rulde by fate. When two are stript long ere the course begin, We wish that one should lose, the other win. And one especially doo we affect, Of two gold Ingots like in each respect, The reason no man knowes, let it suffise, What we behold is censur'd by our eyes. Where both deliberat, the love is slight, Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) — from Hero and Leander

Useful sites for passage planning

The great wave off Kanagawa — Hokusai

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai