The Sea Journal: Seafarers' Sketchbooks

Thames & Hudson Synopsis:

A treasure trove of visual delights: a collection of first-hand journals and sketchbooks created on ocean voyages around the world and across the ages

The sea has been an endless source of fascination, at once both alluring and mysterious, a place of wonder and terror. The Sea Journal contains first-hand records by a great range of travellers of their encounters with strange creatures and new lands, full of dangers and delights, pleasures and perils.

In this remarkable gathering of private journals, log books, letters and diaries, we follow the voyages of intrepid sailors, from the frozen polar wastes to South Seas paradise islands, as they set down their immediate impressions of all they saw. They capture their experiences while at sea, giving us a precious view of the oceans and the creatures that live in them as they were when they were scarcely known and right up to the present day. In a series of biographical portraits, we meet officers and ordinary sailors, cooks and whalers, surgeons and artists, explorers and adventurers. A handful of contemporary mariners provide their thoughts on how keeping a journal remains integral to their voyaging lives.

Often still bearing the traces of their nautical past, the intriguing and enchanting sketches and drawings in this book brilliantly capture the spirit of the oceans and the magic of the sea.

The seafarers include:

Jeanne Baret
William Bligh
Francis Chichester
Vasco da Gama
Francis Drake
Zheng He
Horatio Nelson
Antonio Pigafetta
Piri Reis
Georg Steller
Bartholomew Sharp
Tupaia
Susan Veeder

'A captivating collection of exquisite first-hand records providing fascinating insights into exploration and adventure at sea'
Traveller

'Beautiful … readers could easily be left with the impression that all 18th-century seafarers were also talented artists'
CNN Travel

'‘Lewis-Jones’s book has everything from illustrated accounts of whaling voyages and naval battles to depictions of Kamchatkan kayakers and fluorescent sea slugs'
The Scotsman

About the Author

Huw Lewis-Jones is a historian of exploration with a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He was formerly Curator at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, and the National Maritime Museum, London. His books include The Conquest of Everest (winner of the History Award at the Banff Mountain Festival), The Crossing of Antarctica and Across the Arctic Ocean. He is the author, with Kari Herbert, of the bestseller Explorers’ Sketchbooks.