The Master Mariner

This is Nicholas Monsarrat's final masterpiece, an epic tale of the sea and seafaring from the sixteenth century to near the end of the twentieth.
Told from the point of view of Mathew Lawe, a young Devon sailor who is cursed after a spectacular act of cowardice to wander 'the wild waters till all the seas run dry', it is historical fiction but beset by real events. Monsarrat follows the great captains and naval adventurers from the Artic to the South Pacific. Lawe represents the spirit of m...