Books about the Age of Sail Revised:  13 June, 2005
Continuation

Books  transmit lore from generation to generation and, aside from sitting around the kitchen table listening to your Grandpa's stories, probably will continue to be the primary means to do this.  Unfortunately, books about the Age of Sail don't appear to have the demand that encourages the big bookstores to keep them on their shelves.  Now and then a writer of Patrick O'Brian's popularity appears,  or a Film, like Peter Wier's recent Master and Commander, generates a flurry of interest putting books on their shelves with Russell Crowe's face on the cover. 

Sea-Room exists to make the Age of Sail more readily available.  We intend to cover this period from Biblical times until 1930s when men like my father shipped on sailing schooners hauling lumber, coal, and other commodities.  Certainly our book catalog is big enough to daunt browsing so we've come up with topics, collections, and series.  Collections have no common theme while topics have a common keyword.  Series share a character or two and a good example is Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey- Maturin series which share a world of characters and a time when the world is turning modern.

Compliments from other sites

We are always pleased to hear what others think of us.  On Stuart Weir's  website http://home.earthlink.net/~swier/FSbooks.html
one finds an extensive bibliography of our genre.  Stu writes, "Finding many of the books listed here may take a little effort since many are out of print, and even rare in some cases. The internet book searches are convenient and they pool the inventories of hundreds of shops. The internet is even more useful for persons searching for out-of-print books than it is for persons seeking a new book. The intent of this bibliography is to list some of the best books on naval and maritime history for the period 1775 through 1815, including the War of American Independence, and the wars involving Britain, France and the United States from 1793 to 1815. Books range from introductions and overviews to detailed accounts of single subjects, and mostly are popular accounts, or technical works, rather than academic scholarship."  About Sea-Room, he writes,
"John Berg's Sea-Room Perhaps the best U. S. source for in-print nautical books of the fighting sail period. The Searoom catalog is a very complete list of all books in print now relating to this period, many not listed here."

Details on New Patrick O'Brian book and collection

We are accepting advance orders of Patrick O'Brian's 21, the partial book in the Aubrey-Maturin series and a new way to have the entire set.  Click here.

Clearance Sale

Unlike other bookstores, particularly the biggies who clear the shelves of books that don't have mass-market-size audiences, we support authors whose books serve smaller audiences.  Like other bookstores when we may decide that some books are priced too high for their particular  audience, we have a process to find what the "right price" is.  It works like a "Dutch auction" in that the price is reduced regularly until someone visits Sea-Room and decides to buy it.

One point I noticed is that Sea-Room doesn't sell many "young adult" books.  This is a double disappointment.  Could it mean a modern young person doesn't enjoy the books I did at their age?  Further, does it mean the future audience for O'Brian and Forester and the others is getting smaller?

Click here for clearance books.

Mechanics of Buying.

Find "your price" on any page to determine the cost of item.  To find contact information or an Order Form, click on Yellow Box at top center.