Great Stories of the Sea brings together the best stories of coastal life. When whaling was the continent's high-tech industry, the coast was America's Silicon Valley, and before anyone heard of Yukon gold, there was the rush for fish and timber along Newfoundland's rugged shore. The seaboards are a storyteller's paradise, a hothouse of history and sea-bound adventure.

Great Stories of the Sea includes stories both historic and contemporary. It offers portraits of fishermen and their families' harbor lives, of working people and city life. The lifeline for all the writers collected here is the ocean's edge. There's Stephen Crane, Frank Stockton, Norman Duncan, Thomas Raddall, Alistair Macleod, Silver Donald Cameron and many more with blustery tales about ready ships and sailors longing to put to sea.