Captains Courageous

A map falls into a boy's hands and a one legged cook signs on as ship's cook. Every pirate cliche you know started here, and none of them were cliches yet.

Robert Louis Stevenson

A whaling voyage that turns into one man's war against an animal, and a book that stops the story whenever it feels like explaining rope, oil or the colour white. Complete and unabridged.

Herman Melville

A doctor is sold into slavery for treating the wrong patient, seizes a ship and becomes the most feared captain in the Caribbean. The best pure pirate novel ever written.

Rafael Sabatini

An orphan is sold onto a ship by his own uncle and ends up crossing the Highlands with a wanted rebel. A chase novel with two men who never quite trust each other.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Two friends on a small yacht in the North Sea sandbanks notice something that does not add up, and keep pulling at it. The novel that invented the modern spy thriller.

Erskine Childers