Men have written of the sea since 2500 BC, when an unknown author set down on papyrus his account of a struggle with a sea-serpent--the first sea-story on record. Modern sea-stories begin properly with the chronicles of the early navigators, and it is actually "Robinson Crusoe" that turns the great sea voyage into fiction, the foundation of the sea-tale as literary art. The literature of the sea grew slowly but surely, and it is hoped that this compilation offers indisputable evidence that the prose tradition is sustained, and that readers new to it will find the theme marvelously interesting.