How many of these '101 Crackerjack Sea Books' have you read?

On Tuesday of last week, I posted a review of Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s famous adventure book, “The Worst Journey in the World,” and a friend read it and sent me the link to an outstanding “best-of” books list that features books very similar to Cherry’s classic tale.

It’s called “101 Crackerjack Sea Books.” (The way the word “crackerjack” is used here is a reference to the old Navy colloquialism meaning “of excellent quality.”)

Compiled by Bookmarks Magazine and published in an article written by Dean King during the summer of 2006, this list includes biographies, classics, first-hand accounts, histories, memoirs and novels.

The compilers, which included a number of sea literature experts, selected these books because they were the “best books, regardless of era or genre, that any good library of the sea should possess.” They were selected based on a number of factors, including historical significance, humor, insight into life on the high seas, originality, plot and readability.

Without further ado, here’s the complete list. The year in parentheses after the title is the year the book was either first published or composed.

1. The Odyssey (ca. 700 BC) by Homer
2. Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville
3. A Conrad Argosy (1942) by Joseph Conrad
4. Master and Commander and the Aubrey-Maturin series (1967-2004) by Patrick O’Brian
5. Kon-Tiki (1950) by Thor Heyerdahl
6. Two Years Before the Mast (1840) by Richard Henry Dana
7. Das Boot: The Boat (1973) by Lothar-Günther Buchheim
8. The Journals of Captain Cook (1768-1779) by James Cook
9. Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and the Hornblower series (1937-1967) by C. S. Forester
10. South (1919) by Ernest Shackleton

11. Mutiny on the Bounty Trilogy (1932-1934) by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
12. The Old Man and the Sea (1952) by Ernest Hemingway
13. The Voyage of the Beagle (1839) by Charles Darwin
14. Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe
15. Lord Jim (1900) by Joseph Conrad
16. Sailing Alone Around the World (1900) by Joshua Slocum
17. Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson
18. Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure (1931) by Frank A. Worsley
19. In Hazard (1938) by Richard Hughes
20. Journal of a Cruise (1815) by Captain David Porter (Out of Print)

21. Captains Courageous (1896) by Rudyard Kipling
22. The Last Grain Race (1956) by Eric Newby
23. The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea (1997) by Sebastian Junger
24. Percival Keene(1842) by Frederick Marryat (Out of Print)
25. Before the Wind (1999) by Charles Tyng
26. Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea (1998) by Gary Kinder
27. Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942) by Samuel Eliot Morison
28. The Saga of the Cimba (1939) by Richard Maury
29. Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings (1999) by Jonathan Raban
30. The Principall Navigation, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589-1600) by Richard Hakluyt

31. Typee (1846) by Herman Melville
32. The Sea Around Us (1951) by Rachel Carson
33. To the Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy (1980-89) by William Golding
34. Mutiny on the Bounty(1790) by William Bligh
35. Middle Passage (1990) by Charles Johnson
36. By Way of Cape Horn (1930) by A. J. Villiers (Out of Print)
37. The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (1970) by Gabriel García Márquez
38. Godforsaken Sea: Racing the World’s Most Dangerous Waters(1999) by Derek Lundy
39. The Safe Guard of the Sea (1998) and The Command of the Ocean (2004) by N. A. M. Rodger
40. In the Heart of the Sea (2000) by Nathaniel Philbrick

41. The Cruel Sea (1966) by Nicholas Monsarrat
42. The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (1890) by Alfred Thayer Mahan
43. The Pursuit of Victory (2005) by Roger Knight
44. The Long Way (1971) by Bernard Moitessier
45. The Pilot (1823) by James Fenimore Cooper
46. Long John Silver (1995) by Björn Larsson
47. Gipsy Moth Circles the World (1967) by Francis Chichester
48. John Paul Jones: A Sailor’s Biography (1959) by Samuel Eliot Morison
49. Captain Blood: His Odyssey (1922) by Rafael Sabatini
50. Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea (1986) by Stephen Callahan

51. Decision at Trafalgar (1959) by Dudley Pope
52. Tom Cringle’s Log (1829) by Michael Scott (Out of Print)
53. The Toilers of the Sea(1866) by Victor Hugo
54. Looking for a Ship(1990) by John McPhee
55. White Jacket (1850) by Herman Melville
56. The Riddle of the Sands (1903) by Erskine Childers
57. The Caine Mutiny(1951) by Herman Wouk
58. The Sea-Hawk (1915) by Rafael Sabatini
59. The Bounty (2003) by Caroline Alexander
60. A Night to Remember (1955) by Walter Lord

61. Doctor Dogbody’s Leg (1940) by James Norman Hall
62. The Pedro Gorino (1929) by Captain Harry Dean (Out of Print)
63. The Real McCoy(1931) by Frederic F. Van de Water
64. Shadow Divers (2004) by Robert Kurson
65. The Cruise of the Falcon (1884) by Edward F. Knight (Out of Print)
66. Two Years on the Alabama (1895) by Arthur Sinclair
67. Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (1959) by Alfred Lansing
68. The Golden Ocean (1956) and The Unknown Shore (1959) by Patrick O’Brian
69. Spartina (1989) by John Casey
70. The Cruise of the Nona (1925) by Hilaire Belloc (Out of Print)

71. The Silent World (1953) by Jacques Cousteau
72. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) by Jules Verne
73. Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year on the California Coast (1996) by Daniel Duane
74. Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836) by Frederick Marryat
75. Sufferings in Africa (1817) by Captain James Riley
76. The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss (1913) by John Claus Voss
77. The Pyrates (1983) by George MacDonald Fraser
78. The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst (1970) by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall
79. The Sand Pebbles (1962) by Richard McKenna
80. The Mirror of the Sea (1906) by Joseph Conrad

81. The Long Ships: A Saga of the Viking Age (1954) by Frans G. Bengtsson
82. Sea of Glory (2003) by Nathaniel Philbrick
83. The Lightship(1960) by Siegfried Lenz (Out of Print)
84. Isaac’s Storm (2000) by Erik Larson
85. Under the Black Flag (1995) by David Cordingly
86. Mr. Roberts (1948) by Thomas Heggen
87. The Hunt for Red October (1984) by Tom Clancy
88. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) by Edgar Allan Poe
89. The Black Ship (1963) by Dudley Pope
90. The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower (1970) by C. Northcote Parkinson

91. Run Silent, Run Deep (1955) by Edward L. Beach
92. Over the Edge of the World (2003) by Laurence Bergreen
93. Lord Cochrane (1947) by Christopher Lloyd (Out of Print)
94. Fastnet, Force 10 (1979) by John Rousmaniere
95. In Harm’s Way (2003) by Doug Stanton
96. Blue Latitudes (2002) by Tony Horwitz
97. Delilah (1941) by Marcus Goodrich
98. The Sea Wolf (1904) by Jack London
99. All Brave Sailors: The Sinking of the Anglo Saxon, 1940 (2004) by J. Revell Carr
100. Island of the Blue Dolphins (1964) by Scott O’Dell
101. Jaws (1974) by Peter Benchley

If you’d like to read more about this list and the books mentioned above, I encourage you to visit www.bookmarksmagazine.com/101-crackerjack-sea-books/dean-king. Not only will you find descriptions of the books above, but you’ll also find information about the most recent editions of each title if you’re interested in tracking down copies for yourself.

In the end, how many of the books mentioned above have you had the chance to read? Which did you like or dislike and why? Which would you recommend and why? Let us know in the comments section below.