[tet68]

If you can find them....try James Fenimore Cooper's
Homeward Bound or The Crater, both cracking good sea yarns written at a time when sail was still known.
A good seamans glossary is necessary however.

Most everybody knows of the Last of the Mohicans and his Leather stocking tales,"Oak Openings" etc. but he wrote many stories dealing with the sea life, these are hard to read being couched in the rather different style of those days but after a few chapters, one finds it not difficult and in some ways oddly comfortable.

If anyone out there has a set of "Coopers Works" I might be interested, I only have four volumes of the I believe 9 volume set. These were printed in the later 1800s with very
nice engravings to illustrate, generally three or four stories per volume.

[Alkhin]

WOW!! Sounds terrific...am scribbling these suggestions into a notebook...thats tet68!!!

[KC Burke]

I assume you are aware that James Fenimore Cooper was also an essayist of note.

Reading Russell Kirk’s assessment of his works in that field led me to pick up his best known political and cultural work The American Democrat written about the rise of plain American conservatism and its compatibility with Jacksonian principles.

Give it a try.