The United States in the first half of the nineteenth century was a country that looked to the sea. The largest towns were seaports. These acted as the economic engines of the country, controlling exports, distributing imports, and accumulating and investing capital. This is the context in which the American novel developed. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that James Fenimore Cooper, for instance, most celebrated for his tales of frontier life, also wrote over a dozen works of nautical fiction. What is surprising is just how effectively such nautical novels tackled questions about the emerging nation.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

There have always been sea stories, but Cooper (1789–1851) invented the sea novel, a work in which, in the words of Thomas Philbrick, "the principal characters and action are defined by the oceanic environment that surrounds them"...