Great Stories of the Sea and Ships

by N.C. Wyeth (Editor), Peter Hurd (Illustrator)

More than 50,000 copies of this exhilarating collection of high-seas adventures are already in print. Not only does it showcase the fiction of such classic writers as Daniel Defoe, Jules Verne, and Jack London, but the entries also feature historic first-person narratives, including Christopher Columbus’s own account of his famous voyage in 1492. Every page offers excitement, from vivid tales of heroic naval battles and dangerous journeys of exploration to the thrilling stories of castaways and smugglers. The astonishing variety of works includes “The Raft of Odysseus,” by Homer; Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Mermaid”; “The Specksioneer,” by Elizabeth Gaskell; Washington Irving’s “The Phantom Island”; and “Rounding Cape Horn,” by Herman Melville. Eighteen extraordinary black and white illustrations by Peter Hurd add to the volume's beauty.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Adventure

432 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Newell Convers Wyeth was an American artist and illustrator. He was a pupil of Howard Pyle during the Golden Age of Illustration.

During his lifetime, Wyeth created more than 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books, twenty-five of them for the Scribner Classics, for which he is best known. The first of these, Treasure Island, was one of his masterpieces and the proceeds paid for his studio. Wyeth was a realist painter at a time when the camera and photography began to compete with his craft. Sometimes seen as melodramatic, his illustrations were designed to be understood quickly. Wyeth, who was both a painter and an illustrator, understood the difference, and said in 1908, "Painting and illustration cannot be mixed—one cannot merge from one into the other."

He is the father of Andrew Wyeth and the grandfather of Jamie Wyeth, both well-known American painters.

Reviews

[Kyle K]

The Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen -

The Fight in the Foretop by James Boyd -

Collision at Sea by Frank T. Bullen -

The Voyage of 1492 by Christopher Columbus -

The Wreck of the Royal Caroline by James Fenimore Cooper -

Death at Sea by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. -

North-Wester by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. -

Three Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe -

Dantè's Escape from the Château d'If by Alexander Dumas -

The Specksioneer by Elizabeth Gaskell -

How Captain John Ribault Planted a Colony in Florida by Richard Hakluyt

The Raft of Odysseus by Homer -

The Devil-Fish by Victor Hugo -

An Imprisoned Thunderstorm by Victor Hugo -

The Phantom Island by Washington Irving -

The Iron-Clads by Mary Johnston -

How Amyas Threw His Sword Into the Sea by Charles Kingsley -

Fog by Jack London -

Iceland Fishermen by Pierre Loti -

Mr. Midshipman Easy Makes a Bet by Captain Marryat -

The Flight of the Smugglers by John Masefield -

The Great White Whale by Herman Melville -

Rounding Cape Horn by Herman Melville -

The Mutiny of the Bounty by Guy Murchie, Jr. -

A Descent into the Maelstrom by Edgar Allan Poe -

Sir Richard Grenville and the Spanish Armada by Sir Walter Raleigh -

Attacked by Pirates by Charles Reade -

The Derelict Neptune by Morgan Robertson -

The Cruise of the Torch by Michael Scott -

Trafalgar by Robert Southey -

The Man with the Belt of Gold by Robert Louis Stevenson -

The Rescue of a Castaway by Jules Verne -

An Unknown Species of Whale by Jules Verne -

The Ballad of the Clampherdown by Rudyard Kipling -

[Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

if you like a book about old sea stories then this is for you then.