You guys, the oversea is immense and scary, stunning and sublime. No substance however galore times I deliberation astir its vastness, my encephalon falls abbreviated of comprehension. Growing up successful the Midwest connected the shores of the beauteous but mode little threatening Great Lake Michigan, I didn’t aquatics successful immoderate water until I was 19 years old. When I yet did, disconnected the seashore of Costa Rica connected a outpouring interruption travel successful 1999, I had the archetypal and astir aggravated panic onslaught of my life. My abiding fearfulness and awe of the water are a ample portion of wherefore I wanted to constitute Man Overboard!, a caller astir a 33-year-old Nebraska antheral named Kick Kilpatrick—physical therapist by day, gym bro by broadside hustle—who falls (or jumps?) disconnected a cruise vessel into the Gulf of Mexico portion connected a Thanksgiving abrogation with his extended family, past has to walk the adjacent respective hours desperately treading h2o and hoping for rescue. It’s a comedy!
Like me, Kick is an tremendous instrumentality of endurance stories of each kinds, having grown up consuming Reader’s Digest’s Drama successful Real Life feature, obsessing implicit narratives of radical getting mauled by bears and dragging themselves to information oregon digging themselves retired from backcountry avalanches. But the ones that astir haunted me—and truthful haunt Kick—are the accounts of radical mislaid astatine sea, struggling to beryllium found. Researching this novel, I work and reread a batch of lit astir that benignant of plight, uncovering these to beryllium immoderate of the precise best.
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Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville
Okay, okay, everybody knows this 1 is great, yet it inactive manages to beryllium misunderstood and underrated. It took maine 3 tries implicit a span of galore years earlier I was capable to fastener successful with this novel, but it was worthy the repeated effort. In precocious school, I started it and could archer it was amazing, but didn’t connect; aforesaid successful grad school. In 2019 connected the juncture of Melville’s 200th birthday, the Newberry Library present successful Chicago hosted a 25-hour marathon unrecorded speechmaking of the book—a Dick-a-Thon, if you will—and invited section authors to participate. Moby-Dick is my spouse’s, the writer Martin Seay’s, favourite caller of each time, truthful people helium wanted to join. So did I, but it felt incorrect to bash truthful if I hadn’t work the full behemoth. That January I devoured the communicative implicit the people of 10 days and it remains a highest speechmaking acquisition of my existence. Like Moby himself rising from the deep, the publication crushed me:
“Suddenly the waters astir them dilatory swelled successful wide circles past rapidly upheaved, arsenic if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of ice, swiftly rising to the surface. A debased rumbling dependable was heard; a subterrous hum; and past each held their breaths; arsenic bedraggled with trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a immense signifier changeable length-wise, but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded successful a bladed drooping veil of mist, it hovered for a infinitesimal successful the rainbowed air; and past fell swamping backmost into the deep. Crushed 30 feet upwards, the waters flashed for an instant similar heaps of fountains, past brokenly sank successful a ablution of flakes, leaving the circling aboveground creamed similar caller beverage circular the marble trunk of the whale.”
Gentleman Overboard by Herbert Clyde Lewis
Although tragically the man of the rubric is (spoiler alert!) ne'er rescued from his autumn into the Pacific determination betwixt Hawaii and Panama, Brad Bigelow and Boiler House Press person rescued Herbert Clyde Lewis’s slim, existential communicative from out-of-print obscurity. The brilliance of this 168-page publication lies partially successful its omniscience, giving america not lone the interior workings of Henry Preston Standish, the titular gentleman, but besides those of his fellows, including the seaman Bjorgstrom whose position connected the heavy present captures the Wodehouse-meets-Sartre charm of Lewis’s writing:
“Once Bjorgstrom had sailed connected an American rider vessel plying betwixt New York and Havana, but helium discontinue aft 1 voyage, adjacent though helium severely needed the job. Those frivolous radical with their cocktails and their dancing successful the moonlight, they had nary respect astatine each for the sea. They thought God made the oversea to entertain them, portion each sensible sailor knew God made it to transport merchandise softly from 1 continent to another. As a effect the oversea got aggravated and reminded them of their arrogance each erstwhile successful a while, burning them successful a occurrence aboard ship, freezing them successful a northwester, oregon beating their brains retired against mile-high waves. And it was truthful comic however easy the oversea enactment them successful their places, easier than an elephant stepping connected an ant. That was wherefore Bjorgstrom thought hazily, sailors did not lavation much than they had to. Landlubbers who did not recognize the oversea imagined it was due to the fact that sailors were people dirty, but it was lone due to the fact that they did not privation to get excessively overmuch of the oversea connected them.”
In Hazard by Robert Hughes
Robert Hughes’s 1929 caller A High Wind successful Jamaica, astir a radical of children captured by pirates, is 1 of my astir beloved books astir kids that’s intended for big readers. My favourite of his books from a purely survival-at-sea standpoint, though, is his 1938 caller In Hazard. Based connected the existent communicative of a merchant steamship sucked into a hurricane, present Hughes chronicles what it would consciousness similar to walk 4 days connected a tiny vas warring for your life. Scary and claustrophobic, the caller conveys the panic that specified an ordeal would produce: “There was a odor of stale sea, stale food, and stale air; but determination was different odor too: bitter, ammoniac. It was rather faint, but the skipper knew it. You bash not hide it, if you person ever smelt it. It was the odor of fear. Disciplined men tin power their muscles, adjacent their facial expressions. But they cannot power the chemistry of their sweat glands.”
The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson
Before she was a biologist, Rachel Carson was a poet, and this publication shows it. Although this mediate measurement of what would go her Sea Trilogy is not strictly astir endurance astatine oversea successful the mode that astir of these books are, its expansive, scientific, and lyrical attack to ecological penning argues that truly we are each of america astatine oversea connected this ocean-covered planet, and our endurance arsenic a taxon depends connected the wellness and well-being of our galore oceans and the creatures who dwell wrong it.
I mean: “The calamity of the oceanic islands lies successful the uniqueness, the irreplaceability of the taxon they person developed by the dilatory processes of the ages. In a tenable satellite men would person treated these islands arsenic precious possessions, arsenic earthy museums filled with beauteous and funny works of creation, invaluable beyond terms due to the fact that obscurity successful the satellite are they duplicated. W.H. Hudson’s lament for the birds of the Argentine pampas mightiness adjacent much genuinely person been spoke of the islands: ‘The beauteous has vanished and returns not.'”
Other Shores by Diana Nyad
Both Kick and I clasp Diana Nyad arsenic a benignant of problematic fave. On the 1 hand, this retired and outspoken lesbian long-distance swimmer has done immoderate awesome and admirable aquatic feats. On the other, she besides cheats and lies astir her opponents. Find a Way—the memoir she published aft her alleged 2013 Cuba-to-Florida aquatics astatine the property of 64 (it was denied ratification by the World Open Water Swimming Association owed to deficiency of grounds and imaginable improper assistance from her crew)—is amended known. But I similar this earlier memoir, little dressed up successful motivational talker cliches. Nyad is afloat of braggadocio and self-aggrandizement, but I emotion however she captures the carnal demands and intelligence trippiness of being a assemblage successful the h2o for hours upon end:
“To me, the agelong swims person go hypnotic sessions, deprivation vessel experiences, LSD trips. My representation delves backmost into my childhood, to adjacent arsenic aboriginal arsenic 2 years old, to sift done events and reinterpret dialog that I couldn’t perchance retrieve erstwhile ‘conscious.’ My imaginativeness flowers to the constituent that I americium wonderfully entertained by the scenes I overgarment connected my eyelids and I americium sincerely frightened by the horrors I ideate myself to beryllium confronting.”
Outerbridge Reach by Robert Stone
Everybody work this thriller truthful we tin each speech astir it. Cool, dry, sexy, and philosophical, it tells the communicative of ex-Navy Vietnam War seasoned Owen Browne’s courageous yet foolish effort to triumph a highly publicized contention by sailing solo astir the world. It’s similar if Joan Didion wrote manly escapade stories. Robert Stone said helium based this, his 5th novel, loosely connected the real-life businessman and amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst, but the genius of his fictional attack lies not lone successful the quality of Browne, but besides successful those of Browne’s ambitious woman Anne and of Ron Strickland, the sleazy countercultural documentarian that Browne’s boat-manufacturer leader hires to marque a movie astir the feat.
Dread hangs implicit this publication similar fog implicit the sea. In the end, the communicative is arsenic overmuch astir how, if astatine all, a idiosyncratic tin marque meaning successful a meaningless satellite arsenic it is astir trying not to drown: “Carefully, helium examined his imagined positions connected the chart. All the stories were embroidered, truthful it was said. Sailors privately ridiculed each other’s accounts. No 1 had ever brought the information ashore. It was not to beryllium had.”
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whale Ship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
Nathaniel Philbrick gave the keynote astatine the aforementioned Newberry Library Moby-Dick event, and it was fabulous. He was invited, of course, due to the fact that of this publication astir the 240-ton Essex that acceptable sail from Nantucket successful 1820 lone to beryllium rammed and sunk successful the South Pacific a twelvemonth and a fractional aboriginal by an 80-ton sperm whale, the inspiration for Melville’s novel.
The communicative of the circumstantial New England sailors who went done this journey—90 days starving and dehydrated connected the unfastened ocean—would beryllium worthy the work unto itself. But Philbrick besides includes facts and meditations connected what it takes to past specified extremity, including this passage, which was invaluable successful imagining what Kick would beryllium going through: “Success successful a semipermanent endurance concern requires that a idiosyncratic show an ‘active-passive’ attack to the gradual and agonizing unfolding of events. ‘The cardinal factor…[is] the realization that passivity is itself a deliberate and ‘active’ act,’ the endurance scientist John Leach writes. ‘There is spot successful passivity’.”
The Deep by Rivers Solomon
Like Carson’s publication above, this is not a survival-at-sea communicative successful the accepted sense, but besides similar Carson’s book, it uses the water to research the deeper connections of the past to the contiguous and however events connected 1 portion of the satellite interaction america all. Blending folklore and Afrofuturism, Rivers Solomon’s speculative novella tells of an underwater civilization created by the wajinru, descendants of large enslaved women thrown overboard into the Atlantic. The protagonist Yetu serves arsenic this society’s historian, recalling past traumas connected behalf of everyone, a task that proves destructive to the constituent that she escapes to the aboveground to grapple with the satellite her radical near down and whether oregon not she tin proceed to enarthrosis her burden.
Rivers writes poetically of the profound questions books astir the depths tin access: “One tin lone spell for truthful agelong without asking ‘who americium I?’, ‘where bash I travel from?’, ‘what does each this mean?’, ‘what is being?’, ‘what came earlier maine and what mightiness travel after?’. Without answers determination is lone a hole. A spread wherever a past should beryllium that takes the signifier of an endless longing. We are cavities.”
A Marriage astatine Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst
This 1 came retired excessively precocious for maine to usage arsenic research, per se, but I similar to support up connected my survival-at-sea stories. It caught my oculus erstwhile Barack Obama enactment it connected his Favorite Books of 2025 List. (Remember erstwhile we had a president who liked to read? That was neat.) Journalist Sophie Elmhirst tells the communicative of Maurice and Marilyn Bailey, a joined mates who acceptable sail for a beingness astatine oversea successful 1972 and person a beauteous bully clip upon the bounding main until a sperm whale (can’t blasted these guys for holding a grudge against us, I suppose, considering what we’re doing to the planet) plows a spread into their boat, causing it to descend successful the Pacific. From there, the Baileys indispensable combat to past for months successful a tiny raft.
As Blair Braverman puts it successful her review: “Wilderness endurance is tedious. Its tensions consist, successful ample part, of gradually lowered standards, arsenic survivors cling arsenic agelong arsenic imaginable to the dignities of saying ‘not yet’: to sidesplitting weird animals; sidesplitting cute ones; eating earthy oregon rotten meat; cannibalism. A survivor’s spot is twofold, lying some successful acceptance of what indispensable beryllium done — and successful a absorption to doing it.” This publication illustrates that tension—nothing is happening but everything is happening—that makes survival-at-sea stories irresistible.
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Man Overboard! by Kathleen Rooney is disposable from Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
English (US) ·