Sea stories. From Homer to Hakluyt ; Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Captain Singleton ; Tobias Smollett's Roderick Random ; Britain's sea story

Jane Austen's sailors. Mr. Midshipman Price ; The sailor as hero ; The navy in Mansfield Park ; Persuasion

Captain Marryat's nave. William IV, the sailor king ; Frank Mildmay ; Mr. Midshipman easy ; Marryat and his contemporaries

Dickens and the sea. Dickens's nautical background ; Dombey and son ; David Copperfield ; Dickens and Sir John Franklin

American sea fiction: Cooper, Poe, Dana. James Fenimore Cooper's The pilot and The red rover

James Finemore Cooper's Afloat and ashore

Edgar Allan Poe's The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym ; Richard Henry Dana's Two years before the mast

Herman Melville. Melville's sea stories ; Type and White-jacket ; Moby-Dick ; Billy Budd

Mid-Victorian maritime fiction. From the Crimean war, 1854-6, to the bombardment of Alexandria, 1882 ; Elizabeth Gaskell's Sylvia's lovers

The gentleman as sailor: Trollope, Collins, Eliot ; The sailor as gentleman: William Clark Russell

Adventures at sea. Adventure stories ; Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island ; Rudyard Kipling's Captains Courageous ; Jack London's The sea-wolf

Joseph Conrad. The nigger of the 'Narcissus' ; Lord Jim and Heart of darkness ; 'Falk', 'Typhoon' and 'The secret sharer' ; Chance, victory, the shadow line.