Afloat and Ashore

Name: Afloat and Ashore
Rating: 3.82 (82 reviews)

by James Fenimore Cooper Book 1 in the Miles Wallingford series.

First published 1844

Amazon

3.6(82)

Miles Wallingford leaves the New York family estate of Clawbonny for a life at sea and enters merchant service at a time when the young United States depends heavily on Atlantic commerce. Voyages, shipboard hierarchy and encounters in foreign ports turn his departure from home into an education in risk, work and the wider trading world.

The first Miles Wallingford novel follows a young landowner learning the discipline of seafaring before he can understand the responsibilities attached to property and family. Cooper draws on practical maritime experience to make watches, navigation, storms and commercial decisions part of Miles’s coming of age, while the contrast between ship and estate establishes the tensions developed in the continuation.