I was recently invited to talk with ABC 702 radio Mornings program’s Linda Mottram about what might be my top 10 ‘books about boats’ of all time. It wasn’t hard to think of a few classics such as The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, Thor Heyerdhal’s Kon Tiki, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness — all books that resonated with me when I first read them, and stayed with me long after.
A couple of others that I didn’t get the chance to mention — and were not specifically about boats but have hard-to-forget descriptions of amazing, almost mystical boat journeys — were Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi.
Callers to the program were obviously passionate about their favourite books about boats. But what is it that makes such books so popular? It is the narrative journey of an ocean voyage full of adventure? Or just mucking about with boats over the summer holidays? Maybe it’s the struggle against the ocean and nature? The epic survival-against-all-odds story? Perhaps it’s the way a ship can be a microcosm of society? Or how being stuck together at sea makes us see our common humanity?
A list of some of the books that callers to the program plumped for is below, in no particular order. There’s certainly a few on that list I must read!
But what is your favourite book about boats — and why? Let us know in the comments section.