(no subject)

[derryderrydown]

I'm currently reading Jack Tar by Roy & Leslie Adkins, which is non-fiction about life for seamen and petty officers in Nelson's navy, and it's got me wanting fiction with a similar focus. All the age of sail novels I know of focus on life on the quarterdeck so I was hoping somebody would be able to point me to something that's more about belowdecks?

Comments

[ar]

I read Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer recently; it's about ship boys. Whether it'd scratch your itch precisely, I'm not sure, but my review of it is here.

I'll be looking forward to the other responses to this post, because I've been vaguely interested in finding books of a similar bent.

[derryderrydown]

It sounds close enough to scratch my itch a little!

[sara]

Maybe Dana's Two Years Before the Mast?

It's nonfiction, but quite peppy nevertheless. And was basically written as an expose of how crap life was for merchant seamen in the early 19th C.

[derryderrydown]

Yep, I've already read that. *g*

[sharpiefan]

Way late to the party, I know! The Kydd books by Julian Stockwin deal with a pressed man's rise through the Navy hierarchy to Admiral and the first four books are set during the main character's life on the lower deck. They are, in order, Kydd, Artemis, Seaflower and Mutiny.

If you don't mind reading Young Adult/teen books, you might also like Powder Monkey and Prison ShipBattle Fleet is told by him after he becomes a midshipman.)

There is also Victory by Susan Cooper (Of The Dark Is Rising fame), which is a two-part novel following Sam Robbins, a young boy pressed into the Navy, and a young girl, Molly, who moves from modern-day England to America and begins to grow interested in Nelson's navy.