James Stavridis - The Sailors Bookshelf: Fifty Books to Know the Sea

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

2021 by James Stavridis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Stavridis, James, author.

Title: The sailors bookshelf : fifty books to know the sea / Adm. James G. Stavridis, USN (Ret.).

Description: Annapolis, Maryland : Naval Institute Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021024714 (print) | LCCN 2021024715 (ebook) | ISBN 9781682476987 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781682477168 (ebook) | ISBN 9781682477168 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Sea in literature. | Sailors in literature. | Sea storiesHistory and criticism

Classification: LCC PN56.S4 S73 2021 (print) | LCC PN56.S4 (ebook) | DDC 809/.9332162dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021024714

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021024715

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Printed in the United States of America.

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To my parents who taught me to love reading,

To my teachers who taught me to love writing,

To my shipmates who taught me to love the sea, and

To my wife and daughters who taught me to love life.

by Simon Winchester

by Judith Schalansky

by Mark Kurlansky

by James Nestor

by Dava Sobel

by Thomas J. Cutler

by Capt. James A. Barber Jr., USN (Ret.)

edited by E. B. Potter and Chester W. Nimitz

by Linda Greenlaw

by Ian Urbina

by Rachel L. Carson

by Sylvia A. Earle

by Adm. James Stavridis, USN (Ret.), Rear Adm. Robert P. Girrier, USN (Ret.), Capt. Tom Ogden, USN, and Capt. Jeff Heames, USN

by James P. Delgado

by Tony Horwitz

by Frank McLynn

by Thor Heyerdahl

by Captain Joshua Slocum

by Brian Lavery

by Caroline Alexander

by Jacques Yves Cousteau with Frdric Dumas

by Jules Verne

by Patrick OBrian

by Thomas Heggen

by Herman Melville

by George C. Solley and Eric Steinbaugh

by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall

by Edward L. Beach

by George C. Solley and Eric Steinbaugh, with introduction and biographies by David O. Tomlinson

by Mark Rascovich

by Herman Wouk

by Nicholas Monsarrat

by C. S. Forester

by Yann Martel

by Ernest Hemingway

by Christine Riding and Richard Johns

by George Dewey with Frederick Palmer

by Roger Crowley

Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

by Joy Bright Hancock

by Adm. Sandy Woodward with Patrick Robinson

by Evan Thomas

by Joan Druett

by Barry Strauss

by Alfred Thayer Mahan

by Bradley A. Fiske

by Sebastian Junger

by various expert authors and the editorial staff of Time-Life Books

by Vice Adm. Samuel L. Gravely Jr., USN, with Paul Stillwell

by Richard Henry Dana Jr.

by Cdr. J. D. Kristenson, USN

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheels kick and the winds song and the white sails shaking,
And a grey mist on the seas face, and a grey dawn breaking.

Sea Fever by John Masefield

I have had three great passions in my life.

The first and most important is my lovely wife, Laura, to whom this book is dedicated. I met Laura in Athens, Greeceafter a long sea voyage to arrive therein 1962, when I was eight years old and Laura was only three. While perhaps not literally love at first sight, over many years our relationship grew into the deepest of love stories. The arrival of two daughters and, at this writing, four grandchildren has only intensified my belief that love and marriage are at the center of my life. But it is the other two passions that are at the heart of this book.

The second passion is one of the twin subjects of this volume: reading. From my earliest days, Ive loved the feeling of holding a book in my hand (or even, today, of opening my Kindle). As I do so, I imagine the voyage upon which I am about to embark. It may be a work of historical fiction that will transport me to another time and place. The book before me may be a memoir that allows me access to the inner thoughts and deepest views of a famous historical figure. I may be about to cross a magical threshold and find myself in an entirely imagined vision of the future of the planet. Or the book in my hand can be the launch of a journey to some heretofore unknown part of the earth.

All of this began in earnest in my boyhood in the early 1960s while I was living with my family in Athens. Because there was no television accessible to a small American boy, I never developed the habit of watching the cartoons, situation comedies, and adventure shows that most young boys loved in those days. Instead, my mother, Shirley, would take me every week to the small but well-stocked English-language library at the U.S. Embassy, and wed check out a stack of books. We also ventured to English-language bookstores in Greece, went to the small military exchange on the military base, and ordered books by mail from the United States. Every year on my birthday and Christmas, my principal gift would be a box of books. Ive always believed that reading allows an individual to essentially expand their life every time they open a book, and that sense began when I was very young and continues to this day.

The third passion in my life is the ocean. I first went to sea, and truly out of sight of land, in the summer of 1962 when my family embarked on the old cruise liner SS Constitution out of New York, bound for Athens. We stopped in Boston, then sailed across the Atlantic to Lisbon, Naples, and finally arrived in Athens. From the moment I felt the ship lurch under my feet, I had a sense that I was home. Since my father was a U.S. Marine combat infantry officer, I had at least some connection with the U.S. Navy, given the ties of the Marine Corps and its sister service, the Navy. Throughout the years we lived in Greece, where my father served at the embassy as the assistant naval attach, the sea was everywhere. Greece is, of course, one of the ancient centers of seafaring, and our vacations in the country were always on the seacoast. We went often to the small village of Itea, located near what is today the Corinth Canal and serves as the coastal gateway to the famous shrine at Delphi.