A Sailor's Sweetheart — William Clark Russell / W. Clark Russell

Second mate William Lee narrates this spellbinding tale of a captain's madness, a woman's devotion, a shipwreck, and a dangerous escape from an island. Of this 1880 novel -- about the doomed voyage of the sailing ship Waldershare -- the author maintained “There is not an incident that is not true.” Some events he depicts he experienced himself.