sea adventure

Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian (1970)
It seems invidious to pick only one of the peerless Aubrey-Maturin series of novels: all twenty of them are superbly detailed, impeccably researched and thoroughly absorbing recreations of life on a Royal Naval vessel at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. They are some of the best, and certainly the most popular, historical novels ever published; and the meticulously recreated maritime setting plays a large part in that uniqueness.