in the present
instance, dwelt upon the topic with the purpose of gathering some of
the best work into a single volume. And yet men have written of the
sea since 2500 B.C. when an unknown author set down on papyrus his
account of a struggle with a sea-serpent. This account, now in the
British Museum, is the first sea-story on record. Our modern
sea-stories begin properly with the chronicles of the early
navigators--in many of which there is an unconscious art that none of
our modern masters of fiction has greatly surpassed. For delightful
reading the lover of sea stories is referred to Best's account of
Frobisher's second voyage--to Richard Chancellor's chronicle of the
same period--to Hakluyt, an immortal classic--and to Purchas'
"Pilgrimage."

But from the earliest growth of the art of fiction the sea was frankly
accepted as a stirring theme, comparatively rarely handled because
voyages were fewer then, and the subject still largely unknown. To the
general reader it may seem a rather astounding fact that in "Robinson
Crusoe" we have the first classic of this period and in "Colonel Jack"
another classic of much the same type. These two stories by the
immortal Defoe may be accepted as the foundation of the sea-tale in
literary art.

A century, however, was to elapse before the sea-tale came into its
own. It was not until a generation after Defoe that Smollett, in
"Roderick Random," again stirred the theme into life. Fielding in his
"Voyage to Lisbon" had given some account of a personal experience, but
in the general category it must be set down as simply episodal.
Foster's "Voyages," a translation from the German published in England
at the beginning of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, a
compendium of monumental importance, continued the tradition of Hakluyt
and Purchas. By this time the sea-power of England had become
supreme,--Britannia ruled the waves, and a native sea-literature was
the result. The sea-songs of Thomas Dibdin and other writers were the
first fruits of this newly created literary nationalism.

Shortly after the beginning of the nineteenth century the sea-writer
established himself with Michael Scott in "Tom Cringle's Log," a
forgotten, but ever-fresh classic. Then came Captain Marryat, who was
to the sea what Dickens and Thackeray were to land folk. America, too,
contributed to this literary movement. Even before Marryat, our own
Cooper had essayed the sea with a masterl