Treasure Island by R.L. Stevenson
Beaches, ships, shipwrecks and… pirates of course! Of buccaneers and buried treasure, Treasure Island is the tale of young Jim Hawkins who finds himself the unexpected owner of a map to a treasure island which is said to be home to pirates’ treasure. He takes it to local acquaintances, Dr. Livesey and Squire Trelawney. who recognise it as a map for a huge treasure buried on a faraway island by Captain Flint, a notorious pirate. Trelawney starts planning an expedition and is tricked into hiring Flint’s former crew members including Long John Silver. On sail and at the mercy of the ocean, Hawkins finds friends in Captain Smollet, and ….. deceptively friendly one-legged Silver, a true, blue dangerous pilot, whose plans of mutiny, Hawkins overhears. What starts off as an exciting adventure at sea becomes one of life’s most important lessons to young Hawkins as he learns about friendship, loyalty, courage in the face of adversity, and more. Are you set for your own little sea adventure yet?
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
What happens when you accidentally visit the underwater world and find yourself hosted by a mysterious captain? That is what happens to three people — professor Aronnax, his loyal servant Conseil, and adventurous Ned Land — when they board Nautilus as part of an expedition to find a whale that has been destroying world shipping. But, instead of finding the whale, they end up on a submarine where Aronnax is the honoured guest of the vessel’s commander, Captain Nemo. From fending off sharks, hunting underwater, encountering Atlantis, fighting off a giant squid, and handling Nemo, who loses his sanity, the trio are caught between the devil and the deep sea while exploring the new wonders of their surroundings and finding a way to escape.
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Set in the 1600s, Robinson Crusoe tells the tale of a boy caught between his love for the sea and his father’s wishes of pursuing a career in law. Against his parents’ wishes, he begins sailing and thus begins an adventure that takes you through shipwrecks, pirates, captivity and more. He is held prisoner by a moor and he manages to escape. A Portuguese ship rescues him. The ship is en route to Brazil. With the captain's help, Crusoe buys a plantation. Years later, he joins a slave trading expedition, but is shipwrecked in a storm and finds himself on the Island of Despair. Stranded with only seals, penguins, a dog and cat for company, he builds himself a home and gradually adapts to life on the lonely island.
As the years pass, he discovers cannibals, who visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. At first, Crusoe plans to kill them for their cruelty but decides against it and instead, takes a prisoner and trains him as his servant and names him “Friday”. Will Crusoe spend the rest of his days on this island or will he return to England?
The Coral Island by R. M. Ballantyne
Shipwrecks and exotic islands are the stuff adventures are made of. Three boys — Ralph Rover, Jack Martin and Peterkin Gay — find themselves in the middle of an adventure when they are shipwrecked and get washed up on the coral reef of a large, uninhabited Polynesian island, after a storm at sea. They have the time of their lives discovering all that the island has to offer —fruit, fish and wild pigs provide plentiful food. They even manage to construct a small boat using their possessions — a broken telescope, an iron-bound oar, and a small axe.
Their idyllic days of come to an abrupt end when two groups of Polynesians arrive, engage in battle and kill and eat prisoners. Then arrive more unwelcome visitors in the form of British pirates who make a living by trading or stealing sandalwood. Out of the blue, the boys find themselves caught in a whirlwind of events which they had not signed up for.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Ishmael sails on the whaling ship, Pequod, under the command of Captain Ahab. While the former believes he has signed up for a trip aboard a normal whaling vessel, he discovers that Captain Ahab is not guiding the Pequod for trade but to find and exact revenge on Moby Dick — a white whale known for his size and his ruthless destruction of whalers seeking him — because of which the captain lost his ship and leg. Ahab, a monomaniac (a person with a single morbid preoccupation in an otherwise sound mind one) shows changing behaviour from the start and his peculiarities become bigger as the voyage progresses.
Ishmael realises that the captain will go to any lengths to wreak vengeance on the whale when the whaling crew, including the captain’s son goes missing. The captain refuses to seek help and instead, continues to hunt for Moby-Dick. How will Ishmael find a way out of the dangerous journey?
