On our Facebook and Twitter pages we love to ask our fans for their opinions on all things nautical. In the last couple of weeks I’ve asked people for their recommendations on sailing movies & books. The guidelines were loose — as long as it has something to do with seafaring, it was fair game. Some of these are serious, some silly, some realistic, some not-so-much. Some you will certainly have seen or read before, some you may not have heard of. All of them are works that our members have enjoyed, and you might too. (Perhaps to fill the long winter months until sailing season starts again?)
These lists are not comprehensive by any means, but they’ll get you started. Let us hear your thoughts in the comments below.
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- Movies:
Captains Courageous
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- (1937) starring Freddie Bartholomew & Spencer Tracy, dir. by Victor Fleming
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
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- (2003) starring Russell Crowe & Paul Bettany, dir. by Peter Weir
Captain Ron
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- (1992) starring Kurt Russell & Martin Short, dir. by Thom Eberhardt
Summer Rental
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- (1984) starring John Candy, dir. by Carl Reiner
Cabin Boy
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- (1994) starring Chris Elliott, dir. by Adam Resnick
Wind
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- (1992) starring Matthew Modine & Jennifer Grey, dir. by Carroll Ballard
Morning Light
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- (2008) starring Chris Branning & Kate Theisen, dir. by Mark Monroe
Morgan the Pirate
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- (1960) starring Steve Reeves, dir. by Andre de Toth & Primo Zeglio
The Bounty
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- (1984) starring Mel Gibson & Anthony Hopkins, dir. by Roger Donaldson
The Adventures of Horatio Hornblower
- (1998-2003) miniseries starring Ioan Gruffudd, produced by A&E
For a more comprehensive list of sailing movies, click here.
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- Fiction Books:
The Mutiny on the Bounty Trilogy
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- by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall (first volume 1932)
The Aubrey/Maturin Novels
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- by Patrick O’Brian (series of 20; first volume 1969)
Swallows and Amazons
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- series by Arthur Ransome (series of 12; first volume 1930)
The Horatio Hornblower Novels
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- by C.S. Forester (series of 11; first volume 1937)
Moby-Dick
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- by Herman Melville (1851)
Middle Passage
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- by Charles Johnson (1990)
John Dollar
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- by Marianne Wiggins (1989)
The Old Man and the Sea
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- by Ernest Hemingway (1952)
Jaws
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- by Peter Benchley (1974)
Sounding
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- by Hank Searls (1982)
Mutiny on the Bounty
- by John Boyne (2008)
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- Nonfiction Books:
Close to the Wind
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- by Pete Goss (2000)
Blue Latitudes
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- by Tony Horwitz (2002)
Sailing Alone Around the World
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- by Joshua Slocum (1900)
The Last Grain Race
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- by Eric Newby (1956)
The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float
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- by Farley Mowat (1969)
Sea Change
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- by Peter Nichols (1998)
Two Years Before the Mast
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- by Richard Henry Dana (1840)
Ten Degrees of Reckoning
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- by Hester Rumberg (2007)
Looking for a Ship
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- by John McPhee (1990)
Godforsaken Sea: Racing the World’s Most Dangerous Waters
- by Derek Lundy (1998)
Note: Though almost all of the books that made our list were written by men, I did come across this list of sailing-related books by and about women.
Got more suggestions? Write a comment!
