A heartwarming story, full of the joy of life, peace, and longings… Our hero, the Gypsy Chicao has lived through various unlucky events, nevertheless he is a happy, sprightly lad, a strong and courageous mariner, and a passionate lover. He sees the sea and the wind as his brothers, but sometimes things just don’t go his way. Brazilian author Vasconcelos takes us to a journey in his homeland’s coasts, vividly depicting love, grief, longings and quagmires of this far away but familiar geography.

Finding his life monotonous and boring, the foolhardy Joe runs away from home to become a seaman, only to find himself in the middle of pirates. The Cruise of the Dazzler tells about a youngsters adventures learning about life, while Jack London’s narrative flows with impressive details about the sea and seamanship.

Mediterranean is one of the best loved works of Panait Istrati, nicknamed the Gorky of the Balkans. Its hero Adrien Zagrofi is born to a poor family and grew in difficult circumstances, but never gave up his dreams, just like Istrati himself. Leaving his homeland Romania and everything else behind with high hopes to become a rich man, 22-year old Adrien visits Istanbul, Alexandria, Beirut and Syria in an adventurous journey where he makes many friends. In every line you get more and more into Adrien’s world and love him for all he is. An impressive and engrossing novel bringing the warm breeze of the Mediterranean.

In 1955, while Gabriel Garcia Marquez was working in El Espectador newspaper, he had written the news-story about a big shipwreck in a fourteen-day serial. The articles took the form of a book in 1970. The story focuses on mariner Luis Alejandro Velasco’s life-or-death struggle. 
The destroyer Caldas of the Colombian Naval Force was struck by a storm in the Antilles, and eight people of the crew got lost in the dark sea. The authorities could only be notified of the disaster 120 minutes later, when the ship reached Panama. The US military force –controlling the Panama Canal- and the aid agencies in the Southern Caribbean region immediately started searching for the shipwrecked. As none could be reached in four days, the rescue efforts were ended and the lost sailors were declared dead. One of those lost sailors, Luis Alejandro Velasco, was found a week later, in the throes of death on an empty beach on Northern Colombia. 
While reading The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, how Velasco struggled on an empty raft with no food or water, you’ll feel the power of the oceans through Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical language.

Described by D.H. Lawrence as ‘the best book about the sea,’ Herman Melville’s world-famous novel Moby Dick is about Captain Ahab’s battle against a big white whale. As he sees the whale -Moby Dick- to be the reason why he has lost his leg and his ship, Captain Ahab chases the whale in the ocean to get his revenge. Ahab sees the whale like a symbol of all the evil in the world. 
The book is also famous for Captain’s aphorisms that will stay in your mind. And Melville provides detailed information about seafaring and whales, worth reading for its own sake.