Once upon a time (cough, August 6, 2013, actually), Tor.com published “I Hate Boats,” by Carl Engle-Laird. Carl’s gone on to brilliant things, but I still want to argue with him about the post, and especially this sentence in particular: “Whenever my beloved protagonists get on a boat, I groan, put the book on the table, and pace around the room muttering angrily to myself, alarming friends and loved ones.”
Carl, now that you’re a big-deal editor at Tor.com, I’m finally ready to tell you that I feel exactly the opposite way. I love boats, and when I see one in a book, I feel a lot of hope. I grew up sailing on the Chesapeake Bay, reading nautical histories, and what I want in my fiction is a boat that feels real and suits the plot. When a book takes me over water, I’m eagerly looking for the most seaworthy craft.
Such boats do exist! I am pretty sure we agree on this, because when you said, “The sad thing is that I think stories about boats and sailors can be incredibly compelling. A vessel on the open sea is a full, totally enclosed world unto itself…,” I nodded enthusiastically. But you left your readers a warning, “Don’t just treat your sea voyage as an opportunity to have things happen to your helpless protagonists, who don’t know any more about how to sail than you do. If you do, the only result will be wasted pages,” and I wanted you to know that they’re out there, those exciting boats you seek!
To prove it, I made a list of my favorites. This list is a relatively short one for me, in part because I don’t fall in love with many literary boats, magical or otherwise, for the same reasons you cite. I am, however, a collector of favorite hulls—even those that get only a chapter or a small mention in a much larger story, when they are written well and become their own enclosed world for a moment.
To gain a berth on the list, a boat must first and foremost feel like a boat. It must not be any other conveyance or structure in disguise. Boats behave differently than, say, Inns or Carriages, for instance. The very physics of a boat is different from everything else. The boat must travel over water (with apologies to the lovely spacefaring Diana, the ship in Arabella of Mars by David Levine, and many others). And it must be a sailing ship. That’s personal preference. (I have nothing against motorboats. I just don’t like them.)
So here are nine hulls that number very high among my favorites. Carl, perhaps we can revisit the boat-hate sometime? And for the rest of you, what are your favorites?
Lookfar (aka Sanderling) — Earthsea series
Lookfar was my first boat made of paper and words, and my best-beloved, because of the exchange that happens when Lookfar is renamed: “… do you call her Lookfar, and paint eyes aside her prow, and my thanks will look out of that blind wood for you and keep you from rock and reef. For I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.” The brown/red sailed clinker isn’t as fancy as Sea Otter, Dolphin, or Shadow (an archipelago trilogy requires many boats), but it gets the mage Ged where he needs to go in Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy.
Nightjar — A Daughter of No Nation
There are many ships in Stormwrack, but this one is mine. “Nightjar was a seventy-two-foot cutter with a crew of twenty-five. It had been enchanted so that it was ever-so-slightly inconspicuous, easily overlooked by casual observers.” Created by A.M. Dellamonica, Nightjar is among the first of a fleet of enchanted ships in a portal universe, beginning in A Daughter of No Nation.
Vivacia — The Liveship Traders series
Among of the liveships created by Robin Hobb (The Liveship Traders series, 1998-2012), the Vivacia captured my imagination first. Crafted from wizardwood and sentient, Vivacia is a standout craft with Opinions. (For the record, The Paragon also commands my readerly attention.) Hobb’s liveships are compelling characters as well as ships.
The Giggling Goat — The Drowning Eyes
Emily Foster’s weather-mage beset ship and its stalwart captain in the novella The Drowning Eyes [Editor’s note: acquired by one Carl Engle-Laird for Tordotcom Publishing…] handle wind shifts and storm tides equally well. The Goat’s deck and gunwales are a fantastic setting within which its characters interact, but it’s also an excellent vehicle for the plot. (I also love the map in this book, too, but that’s for another post).
HMS Surprise (Aubrey and Maturin series) and HMS Hotspur (Horatio Hornblower series)
Patrick O’Brian’s own creation, titular novel and frigate both. Yes, I know this is nautical fiction, not fantasy. It is still the shiniest boat, and a beautifully rendered world unto itself. HMS Hotspur is also a gorgeous sloop, crafted by C.S. Forester. (Look, Carl, it is not every day that a sloop gets a fancy position in a movie and I am a sucker for sloops and this has NOTHING to do with Ioan Gruffudd being really impressive as Horatio Hornblower. Not a thing.)
Clalsu — The Fifth Season
“Its sails are tawny canvas, also much-mended and sun-faded and water marked.” Though readers spend only a very short time aboard the Clalsu, after just a moment we realize we’re sailing with people—especially Captain Meov—who really know what they’re doing. Best of all, this boat reacts to the behavior of those aboard in a way that is much different from land because the author rocked it. Thank you, N.K. Jemisin, thank you from the bottom of my heart for writing good boat physics in The Fifth Season.
The Poison Orchid — Red Seas Under Red Skies
Captained by Zamira Drakasha and drafted by Scott Lynch in Red Seas Under Red Skies, the Orchid is my favorite pirate ship in part because it’s got all its working bits and is an actual working ship (a brig, actually…) You can practically hear it creak as it comes about. (To be fair, Carl did include The Poison Orchid as a good example of boat writing in his “I Hate Boats” post, too.)
The Left-Handed Fate
A privateer ship that has its home port in the magical Nagspeake, the Fate carries Lucy Bluecrowne and her friends Max and Liao through the troubled waters of the War of 1812. While sailing up and down the Chesapeake, the Fate calls at my own former home port of Fells Point, Maryland, further endearing it to me. Author Kate Milford has created a wonderful set of ships and ports for this middle grade book, The Left-Handed Fate.
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The Ship of Stolen Words
This article was originally published August 2016.
Two-time Nebula Award-winner Fran Wilde has (so far) published seven novels, a poetry collection, and over 50 short stories for adults, teens, and kids. Her stories have been finalists for six Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, three Hugo Awards, three Locus Awards, and a Lodestar. They include her Nebula- and Compton Crook-winning debut novel Updraft, and her Nebula-winning, Best of NPR 2019, debut Middle Grade novel Riverland. Her short stories appear in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, Nature, Uncanny Magazine, and multiple years’ best anthologies. Fran directs the Genre Fiction MFA concentration at Western Colorado University and also writes nonfiction for publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Tor.com. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and at franwilde.net.
The Dawn Treader. Oh! And the Muntjac.
The Tide Child from the Bone Ships by RJ Barker. Such a wonderful nautical fantasy trilogy.
I would add the Hecate from R.S. Belcher’s Queen of Swords. It’s Anne Bonney’s sentient warship that can, under certain circumstances, basically fold space.
H.M.S. Surprise did have a few years of fantastic voyages. As O’Brian said in the introdutuction to The Far Side of the World- “the author may be led to make use of hypothetical years… an 1812a or even an 1812b.”
And for those of you who haven’t yet read it, Jo Walton did a wonderful re-read of the Aubrey/Maturin series. https://www.tor.com/series/re-reading-patrick-obrians-aubrey-maturin-series/
I realize this is stretching the category, but the Armada from the Scar is probably my favorite “ship” in Fantasy after the Liveship Traders.
Starfare’s Gem From Donaldson’s Second Chronicles? Bayle Doman’s beloved Spray?
The ship going to the Grey Havens at the end of LOTR.
Gulliver did a lot of sailing, but his ships usually came to bad ends. Now that I think about it, Sindbad had the same problem.
Sherwood Smith’s Inda series
Not especially fond of water. Give me a sand sailing ship, like the sand charvolants in Terry Dowling’s exceptional Adventures of Tom Rynosseros.
Vingilot, especially for those of us with a penchant for both SFF and astronomy.
Fantasy: Vingilot and Dawn Treader, as mentioned above.
SF: Resolution, from Rendezvous with Rama.
Which has to be a fairly small category – a “sea-going” vessel built from material found aboard a spacecraft for use in a “sea” aboard another spacecraft…
The marvelous starjammers of Treasure Planet, which sail the etheric waves in a universe I would dearly love to revisit. They are even cooler because the technology scales down. There are space dinghies and space sailboards. You can be spacewrecked in the etheric ocean on a raft made of flotsam.
I would add to the list “Voyage of the Shadowmoon” by Sean Mcmullan. A little ship that is deceptively capable.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1150501.Voyage_of_the_Shadowmoon
Swallow, from Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons. It’s the stories that the Walker children weave round their adventures in Swallow that lift it into fantasy.
Robert V.S. Redick’s excellent Red Wolf Conspiracy series – even though IMS Chathrand is slightly larger than a sloop!
Also agree with the inclusion of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series – I would be a happy castaway on a desert island if I had my omnibus O’Brian with me.
BillReynolds @10
There’s the (self-descriptive and magical) Ship Which Sails Over Land and Sea in Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné …
I am usually more attracted to books than to movies, but I have a fond spot for Dr. Dolittle’s ship, the Flounder, in the Rex Harrison movie. I always wanted to live in a cabin like that.
Ship of Ishtar from Abraham Merritt’s novel. It’s an old (1920s) novel, but terrific, ending on a heartbreaking note that you don’t usually find in fantasy.
The Queen Ravenna, from Martha Wells’ Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy. The only ocean liner on this list. I kept hoping she didn’t get sunk as I read the trilogy. What else would you expect from the author of Murderbot?
I love these answers!!! Fantastic boats and vessels, all!
How about the Desperate Lark, Captain Shard’s ship? She is to be found in A Story of Land and Sea in Tales of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany.
@23: Though the Desperate Lark spends most of the story being hauled across the Sahara, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Niger River, so may not meet the requirement “The boat must travel over water”.
What about the Chathrand? Am I the only person who has read the Red Wolf Conspiracy? :(
Showboat World, by Jack Vance, the shop Vargaz, in Servants of the Wankh, by Jack Vance
I have to second #9’s inclusion of Sherwood Smith’s Inda series, where many kinds of ships, from traders to pirate ships to ships of war are central to the story.
Though a humble vessel, I nominate “My Boat” from Joanna Russ’s story of the same name.
Lookfar (Earthsea series), Dawntreader (Narnia) and The Eagle, from SM Stirling’s Nantucket series.
Remember in Farthest Shore how excited Prince Arren got when he laid eyes on the Lookfar? He was going on an adventure with the Archmage in his legendary boat! So cool! Though of course he didn’t use that word.
I fell in love with the Dawntreader at first sight of her cutaway view. How can you not love a dragon headed boat?
Once upon a time, I read the Riverworld saga by Philip Jose Farmer. The reincarnated Mark Twain had built a riverboat named the Not For Hire, and its tender the Post No Bills, for his quest along the eponymous River.
The Argo, captained by Jason , in Kingsley’s The Heroes .Whenever I drive through a swinging gate I remember the Clashing Rocks.
The Little Grey Men built a paddle boat [can’t remember her name] to explore Folly Brook. Baldmoney drew a map inside his leather jacket. After her wreck they found a wind-up boat , the Jeanie Deans.
Rereading Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories, I was reminded how awesome The Ship Which Sails Over Land And Sea is.
Would it be too far of a stretch to add Temeraire to the list? I mean, he’s kindof a boat…
I have Read a few of the books above . I like dragons so first ship in my opinion naomi novick . Lots of real ships and a few new but HMS Reliant is always first for me
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28876.His_Majesty_s_Dragon
It’s not a ship. It’s not even a boat.
It’s biggest fantasy element has a black man escaping down the Mississippi in the early nineteenth century.
I don’t care. Huck Fin’s raft.