William Clark Russell

Excerpt: "My dandy-rigged yacht, the Spitfire, of twenty-six tons, lay in Boulogne harbour, hidden in the deep shadow of the wall against which she floated. It was a breathless night, dark despite the wide spread of cloudless sky that was brilliant with stars. It was hard upon the hour of midnight, and low down where we lay we heard but dimly such sounds of life as was still abroad in the Boulogne streets. Ahead of us loomed the shadow of a double-funnelled...

Excerpt: "All day long there had been a pleasant breeze blowing from abeam; but as the sun sank into the west the wind fined into light, delicate curls of shadow upon the sea that, at the hour of sundown, when the great luminary hung poised like a vast target of flaming gold upon the ocean-line, turned into a surface of quicksilver through which there ran a light, wide, long-drawn heave of swell, regular as a respiration, rhythmic as the sway of a...

Excerpt: "On Monday, August 8th, 1838, the large bark Ocean Ranger, of which I was second mate, was in latitude 38° 40' N., and longitude 11° W. The hour was four o'clock in the afternoon. I had come on deck to relieve the chief officer, who had had charge of the ship since twelve. It was a very heavy day-a sullen sky of gray vapor seeming to overhang our mastheads within pistol-shot of the trucks. From time to time there had stolen from the far...

Excerpt: "I will pass by all the explanations concerning the reasons of my going to sea, as I do not desire to forfeit your kind patience by letting this story stand. Enough if I say that after I had been fairly well grounded in English, arithmetic and the like, which plain education I have never wearied of improving by reading everything good that came in my way, I was bound apprentice to a respectable man named Joshua Cox, of Whitby, and[2] served...

A tale of intrigue, deceit an villainy set on the rugged coast of Cornwall. It is also a story of a father's love for his daughter who is swept off her feet by an audacious and handsome ship's captain. The story is set against the days of smugglers, Revenue men, pirates and sailing ships. With a red-herring or two thrown in for good measure, this is one of W. Clark Russell's best short stories. (Amazon)

Excerpt: "In a period of English history which graybeards call the good old times - the fine old times; that is to say, when Parliament was horribly corrupt, and the Poor Laws as barbarous as the Inquisition; when it took fifteen hours to go from London to Dover and when at least one-half of the conveniences which we now very reasonably call the necessities of life had no existence Southbourne was a small straggling village, and, by reason of the...

Excerpt: "I had passed from the deck, where I slept, to the cabin in too great a hurry to notice the weather. Now, reaching the poop, I stood a moment or two to look around, being in my way as concerned about the direction of the wind as Vanderdecken himself. It still blew fresh, but the heavens lay open among the clouds that had thickened their bulk into great drooping shining bosoms, as though indeed the crystalline blue under which they sailed...

The Wreck of the Grosvenor (1877) is a nautical novel by William Clark Russell first published in 3 volumes by Sampson Low. According to John Sutherland, it was "the most popular mid-Victorian melodrama of adventure and heroism at sea." It remained popular and widely read in illustrated editions well into the first half of the 20th century. It was Russell's best selling and most well known novel. Russell noted in a preface, the novel 'found its first...

This is a book of remarkable nautical ghost and horror stories written by William Clark Russell in 1893. The stories are for the most part set on ships and bring the reader on board for ghostly nights, wonderful sights, and strange occurrences.

Excerpt: "It was a brilliant afternoon. The sunshine in the water seemed to hover there like some flashful veil of silver, paling the azure so that it showed through it in a most delicate dye of cerulean faintness. The light breeze was abeam; yet the ship made a gale of her own that stormed past my ears in a continuous shrill hooting, and the wake roared away astern like the huddle of foaming waters at the foot of a high cataract. On the confines...