Authors McF - McN
McFadden, G. V. [Gertrude Violet] ( -1963)
The Preventive Man. John Lane, 1920. 304 pages
Mystery novel set in a Dorset village in 1830 and 'concerned with the suppression of the smugglers, then at the very height of their activity'
McFarland, Raymond (1872-1944)
Skipper John of the Nimbus. Macmillan, 1918. 294 pages
Sons of the Sea. G. P. Putnam's, 1921. 425 pages
The Sea Panther. A.L. Burt, 1928. 309 pages
The capture of the French fortress of Louisburg by New Englanders during the French & Indian Wars
The Masts of Gloucester : Recollections of a Fisherman. W.W. Norton, 1937. 268 pages
McFee, William (1881-1966)
Aliens. E. Arnold, 1914. 327 pages
A revised edition was published by Doubleday in 1918
Casuals of the Sea : the voyage of a soul. Doubleday, Page, 1916. 469 pages
A child born out of wedlock attempts to find work in the London dockyards.
Captain Macedoine's Daughter. Doubleday, Page, 1920. 326 pages
A girl is used as a pawn by her father to further his business interests.
Command. Doubleday, Page, 1922. 337 pages
Adventures of a mate on a British freighter.
Race. Doubleday, Page, 1924. 398 pages
Pilgrims of Adversity. Doubleday, Doran, 1928. 433 pages
The crew of a British tramp steamer become involved in a South American revolution.
Sailors of Fortune. Doubleday, Doran, 1929. 415 pages
A collection of short stories and one novelette dealing with the men, officers and soldiers of fortune who serve in ocean liners. Contents: A son of the commodore.--The armoire.--The roving heart.--The wife of the dictator.--Captain Musker's vacation.--The vanished passenger.--The sword of Doctor Damocles.--At the Villa Agostino.--Relesse.--The garden of the Bey.--The Virgin of Loreto.--Os the Malecon.--Deckers on the coast.--The untarnished shield.
North of Suez. Doubleday, Doran, 1930. 309 pages
The adventures of Lt. Stephan Rumford, RNR as he serves as the Chief Neutral Transport Officer at Port Said during WW I. Rumford -- who believes all foreigners are "Dagos" -- executes his responsiblity for passing neutral ships through the canal with scrupulous honesty, to the discomfort of the captains attempting to carry private cargos on government charters, and the disgust of his wife, who cannot understand why he won't feather his nest with offered bribes.
The Harbourmaster. Doubleday, Doran, 1931. 439 pages
The death of a couple in a Caribbean port as told by a cruiseship engineer.
The Beachcomber. Doubleday, Doran, 1935. 459 pages
Great passenger liners and modern sirens of the sea
Derelicts. Doubleday, Doran, 1938. 439 pages
Our hero, chief engineer of the SS SANSOVINA, meets a wealthy passenger and spins her a yarn about WW I.
Watch Below : a reconstruction in narrative form of the golden age of steam when coal took the place of wind and the tramp steamer's smoke covered the seven seas. Random House, 1940. 375 pages
Lightly fictionalized account of the author's experiences with the British tramp freighter trade.
Ship to Shore. Random House, 1944. 407 pages
The captain of the luxury liner LEXINGTON during the Depression deals with a fire at sea.
In the First Watch. Random House, 1946. 334 pages
Reminiscences of life at sea in British tramp steamers before and during the Great War.
McGee, James
Wolf's Lair. Grafton, 1990. 320 pages
A familiar story - In the closing hours of the Third Reich a U-boat is loaded with a mysterious cargo and an even more mysterious passenger. The captain's orders are to proceed (refuelling on the way of course!) to Argentina and ignore all instructions to surrender. A present day adventurer, ex-special forces - framed drug smuggler, is recruited by the U-boat captain's son to solve the whereabouts of the lost submarine after his father's Knight's Cross (with oak leaves, swords and diamonds) is found clutched in the hand of a dead Greek fisherman. Written in an offhand style making a fair light read in spite of the spectre of the Fourth Reich.
McGinnis, Paul
Lost Eden. McBride, 1947. 287 pages
One of Captain Cook's sailors voluntarily stays behind in Hawaii.
McGlamry, Beverly
Goodly Heritage. Ballentine, 1986. 532 pages
In the late 17th and early 18th centuries Abrial Barker becomes buccaneer while Eliza Barker becomes renowned ship designer.
McGowen, Tom
The Last Voyage of the Unlucky Katie Marie. A. Whitman, 1969. 32 pages
After spending all his money on a cargo to trade in India, the captain of the clipper UNLUCKY KATIE MARIE is forced to use chunks of ice to ballast the ship.
McIlveen, Melvin
Treachery and treason in Canada's sealing fleet. Windshift, 2010. 310 pages
Inspired by Victor Jacobson, a well known West Coast sealer based in Victoria B.C. This is an epic love story and rivalry between two 'sea dogs' played out on the sealing grounds of the Pacific North West. It is set in a period when Vancouver Island was not part of British Columbia, not part of Canada and not part of the USA.
McIntyre, John Т. (1871-1951)
With John Paul Jones. Penn, 1906. 358 pages
The Воу Tars of 1812. Penn, 1907. 319 pages
With Fighting Jack Barry. J.B. Lippincott, 1907. 309 pages
Blowing Weather. Grosset & Dunlap, 1923. 407 pages
Stained Sails. Frederick A. Stokes, 1928. 399 pages
Drums in the Dawn. Doubleday, Doran, 1932. 322 pages
McIntyre, Marjorie
The River Witch. Crown, 1955. 282 pages
The daughter of riverboat captain and her adventures along the upper Mississippi. So notorious in her day, they wrote songs about her.
McKay, Simon
The Seas of Fortune. Berkley, 1983. 359 pages
Yankee captain and ship designer moves to Charleston, begins developing revolutionary steamships, becomes a noted blockade runner during the Civil War, and continues his struggle to get steam accepted following that conflict.
McKemy, Kay
Samuel Pepys of the Navy : A Biographical Novel. Frederick Warne, 1970. 242 pages
McKenna, Richard (1913-1964)
The Sand Pebbles. Harper & Row, 1962. 597 pages
For years the U.S. Navy gunboat San Pablo has been patrolling a tributary of the Yangtze River in China protecting American missionaries and businessmen. Her crew has grown soft and lazy. Then the great Chinese Revolution of the 1920's breaks out. This is the story of the crew, particulary Jake Holman, as they face the precarious situation and make agonizing decisions.
The Sons of Martha, and Other Stories. Harper & Row, 1967. 221 pages
Posthumous collection of McKenna's short stories, and the unfinished novel on which he was working when he died. In addition to first three sections of the novel, the collection consists of an autobiographical essay, Journey With a Little Man; short stories King's Horseman, Fool's Errand, and A Chronicle of a Five-Day Walking Tour Inland on the Southern Portion of Guam.
Casey Agonistes, and other science fiction and fantasy stories. Harper & Row, 1973. 150 pages
Posthumous collection of McKenna's SF short stories: Casey Agonistes.--Hunter, come home.--The secret place.--Mine own ways.--Fiddler's green. The last work, perhaps McKenna's most ambitious story, tells of a group of men adrift in a small boat, without food and water, who mentally create a pocket universe into which they may escape.
The Left-Handed Monkey Wrench. Naval Institute Press, 1984. 335 pages
Collection of stories, essays and part of the autobiographical novel he was working on at his death. Includes: The Left-Handed Monkey Wrench; Church Party; King's Horsemen; Life Aboard the USS Gold Star; The Fiction of History; The Wreck Of Uncle Josephus; and The Sons of Martha.
McLaughlin, W. R. D. [William Raffan Davidson] (1908- )
Antarctic Raider. Harrap, 1960. 253 pages
In the closing days of 1941 the German surface raider VIKING leaves Hamburg on a secret mission to capture the Allied whaling ships operating off Antarctica and return them to Germany with the whale oil from which glycerine is to be extracted for munitions. The mission is not as secret as the Germans hoped, the British have got wind of it and dispatch the armed merchant cruiser QUEEN OF NEW ZEALAND, under the command of Captain Carmichael, RN, to combat the threat.
So Thin is the Line: A Further Novel of the War in the Antarctic. Harrap, 1963. 189 pages
A convincing WW II story of piracy, sabotage and murder on the high seas when whaling was a reputable industry and an economic necessity. As the sub-title hints, this is a continuation of the author's previous novel and concerns the German commandos and officers in charge of the two Norwegian whaleships, CACHELOT and ANTARCTICA, that the VIKING captured and sent back to Germany, and the reactions of the ships' crews. The two ships are in the charge of two very different types of German officers.
Call to the South: a Story of British Whaling in Antarctica. Harrap, 1962. 188 pages
McLean, Allan C.
Master of Morgana. Harcourt, Brace, 1959. 222 pages
16 yr. old Hebridean lad joins a salmon fishing crew on the isle of Skye to find out who pushed his brother off of a footbridge.
McLeay, Alison
Sea Change. Simon & Schuster, 1992. 444 pages
In the 1860s our heroine, a New Orleans riverboat rat, flees to England in search of her "place" in life. The search ends aboard a fabulous yacht in the middle of the Atlantic. U.K. title: Sweet Exile.
McLeod, Grover Stephen (1923-2012)
Sub Sailor. Manchester, 1964. 315 pages
Seaman Ham signs onto the submarine, USS Terrapin. After attacking Japanese ships, Ham becomes a guerilla, when he is accidently left topside and forced to swim to Panay where he joins a band of Moros. For young readers.
Teodoro. Manchester, 1969. 254 pages
USN submarines in the Pacific & Philippines guerrilla operations
Submarine Stories. Manchester, 1977. 273 pages
Tales from a man who lived part of his life aboard American submarines in the Pacific during the WW II.
The ghost of the Chimera and The Stowaway. Manchester, 1988. 143 ppages
A bizarre, supposedly true, story of the ghost submarine, Chimera in WW II. The second story, the Stowaway, tells of two of the crewmen of Chimera, one of them a stowaway.
The Sultan's Gold : and other fleet type submarine stories. Manchester, 1988. 138 pages
McManus, Chris
The Deep-Sea Tow. Harrap, 1954. 224 pages
The 'Hades Belle'. Harrap, 1955. 202 pages
Whisky Johnny. Harrap, 1956. 199 pages
McMeekin, Clark [pseud. Isabel McMeekin (1895-1973) & Dorothy Clark (1899-1983)]
Red Raskall. D. Appleton-Century, 1943. 312 pages
A Virgina coast shipwreck before the Civil War
McMillin, Mark M. (1954- )
Captain Luke Ryan, Privateer Series:
Gather the Shadowmen. Hephaestus, 2011. 300 pages
The year is 1778 and as the brutal war between the American Colonies and Great Britain drags on, a 25 year old Irishman named Luke Ryan is the master of the fastest ship on the water, the Black Prince, and runs a very profitable smuggling trade between Dunkirk and Dublin. He and his men are indifferent to the war until one day the British seize his ship and throw his men into Dublin's Black Dog. Ryan is ruined but concocts a bold plan to break his men out of jail and to retake his ship and when his plan succeeds, the Irishmen, now fugitives and with prices on their heads, set sail for France to offer their services to an American named Benjamin Franklin.
Prince of the Atlantic. Hephaestus, 2011. 340 pages
The year is 1779 and the American Colonies are losing their life and death struggle for independence from Great Britain. Their rag-tag armies are in retreat. Their small navy has been swept from the seas. The fate of a fragile nation, the fate of the Revolution, hangs by a thread. In walks Ryan with his fast ships and iron men eager to fight the British for their own reasons. Before they are finished Ryan and his men will capture or destroy over 100 British ships, take hundreds of prisoners and invade English and Scottish towns – tying down precious military resources, causing financial panic in London and inflicting more damage on British maritime interests than perhaps any other naval force during the war.
Napoleon's Gold. Hephaestus, 2011. 410 pages
The British Navy has finally caught the brilliant Captain Ryan, a man who terrorized English ships and towns for nearly two years. Ryan is tried for treason and piracy, convicted and sentenced to hang until King George grants mercy after hearing the pleas of Queen Marie Antoinette, an admirer of the young mariner, to spare the Irishman's life. After the war Ryan returns to France but he has no money, no ship or crew and has no prospects until one day he meets an ambitious entrepreneur named Joseph Bonaparte and his younger brother, a major in the French Army, named Napoleon.
Captain Bloody Mary, the Queen's Privateer Series:
The Butcher's Daughter: A Journey Between Worlds. Hephaestus, 2015. 387 pages
Blood for Blood: the Uncertain Journey. Hephaestus, 2018. 412 pages
Ill Winds Blowing Across a Troubled Sea: the Journey's End. Hephaestus, 2022. 432 pages
McMurtry, Larry (1936-2021)
Paradise. Simon & Schuster, 2001. 159 pages
McMurtry boards a cruise ship wandering among the Marquesas with a motley complement of international "island junkies" with whom he finds little in common. McMurtry doesn't complain: instead, he passes the time remarking on the national and personal idiosyncrasies of his fellow passengers, and reflecting on closeted family skeletons, feelings of marginality and loneliness, mortality, and other matters while observing the passing scene.
McNamara, Tom (1944- )
Henry Lunt Series:
Henry Lunt & the Ranger. Nuventures, 1990. 348 pages
Rescued from British captivity by John Paul Jones, Henry Lunt serves as a lieutentant aboard the USS RANGER. Lunt is sent ashore in Belfast, to spy out the reason that HMS DRAKE is avoiding combat with Jones, discovers the ship is testing a new secret weapon (the carronade), and galls the Drake's captain into trading broadsides with Jones.
Henry Lunt & the Spymaster. Nuventures, 1994. 429 pages
Following the return of the DRAKE to France, Lunt serves with Franklin at the American Delegation in Paris. He discovers that British spies have infiltrated the delegation, and then is sent to England to re-establish contact with the "Spymaster." The followup, Henry Lunt at Flamborough Head, was never published.