Short Stories About the Sea: 10 Classics Explained
Quick answer: Ten classic short stories about the sea, from The Open Boat and The Little Mermaid to A Descent into the Maelstrom and The Secret Sharer, summarised and compared.
Sea stories are read inland, by people who want to be somewhere the rules are different, and a boat suits the short story because it is a room with no exits. The writers here range from Crane's dinghy to Andersen's palace under the waves.
The collection begins with survival, moves through the fairy tales and the whirlpools, and ends with two men on a ship who share a cabin and a secret. Each title links to a page that summarises the story and explains its ending.
The stories
The Open Boat by Stephen Crane. Four men from the sunk steamer Commodore row a dinghy through a night and a day toward a shore they can see and cannot reach. Crane, who was one of them, gives the waves the story's only reliable point of view.
The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. The youngest sea princess saves a drowning prince and trades her voice to a sea witch for legs that feel like knives. Her sisters bring her a knife of a different kind on the last night.
The Fisherman and His Soul by Oscar Wilde. A young fisherman nets a mermaid and, to live with her under the sea, cuts his soul away with a witch's knife and sends it wandering. Once a year the soul returns to the shore to tempt him with what it has seen.
MS. Found in a Bottle by Edgar Allan Poe. A passenger on a ship out of Java survives a storm that kills the crew and is thrown aboard a vast black vessel manned by ancient men who do not see him. The ship is heading for the pole.
A Descent into the Maelstrom by Edgar Allan Poe. A Norwegian fisherman with white hair tells how his boat was caught by the great whirlpool off Lofoten and how, watching the debris circle, he noticed that some shapes sank slower than others. He let go of the boat.
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad. A new captain, keeping the anchor watch alone in the Gulf of Siam, finds a swimmer at the ship's ladder who has killed a man on a nearby vessel. He hides him in his cabin, and steers close enough to an island to let him swim for it.
The Bottle Imp by Robert Louis Stevenson. Keawe, a Hawaiian sailor, buys a bottle in San Francisco whose imp grants every wish and damns whoever dies holding it. He must sell it for less than he paid, and the story sails from Honolulu to Tahiti for a buyer.
How the Whale Got His Throat by Rudyard Kipling. A whale who has eaten every fish in the sea swallows a shipwrecked Mariner, raft and all, and the Mariner, a man of infinite resource, makes himself very unwelcome inside. The grating he builds explains something about whales.
Love of Life by Jack London. A man abandoned by his partner in the northern barrens crawls for days toward a river mouth, trailed by a sick wolf, and finally sees a ship at anchor in the bay. Aboard, the sailors notice he is hiding biscuits in his bunk.
The Gold-Bug by Edgar Allan Poe. On Sullivan's Island off Charleston, William Legrand finds a golden beetle and a scrap of parchment, and by heating the parchment uncovers a cipher. The sea gave up the clue; the digging happens inland.
Reading them together
The collection's argument is that the sea forces a choice the land lets you postpone. Crane's oiler takes his turn at the oars; Poe's fisherman lets go of the boat; Conrad's captain steers for the rocks; Andersen's mermaid drops the knife. Wilde and Stevenson use the sea as a route between bargains, and both end with a price paid gladly.
Poe has three stories here and they are three attitudes to the water: terror in the bottle manuscript, calculation in the maelstrom, and puzzle in the gold-bug. Read together they are a small course in how one writer can vary a setting.
If you want to write about the sea
What writers can take from this
- Read The Open Boat first and slowly; it is the standard against which sea stories are measured.
- Pair The Little Mermaid with The Fisherman and His Soul for two bargains, one from below the water and one from above.
- Poe's three stories can be read in an evening and are best read in the order given.
- The Secret Sharer is long for a short story; read it in one sitting so the cabin stays claustrophobic.
- How the Whale Got His Throat is for reading aloud, preferably to someone small.
Try it yourself
Write a story set entirely on a small boat, in which the people aboard can see land the whole time and the story is about what stops them reaching it.
Questions
What is the best short story about the sea?
The Open Boat is the standard, and The Secret Sharer the one writers study for point of view. The Little Mermaid is the most read, in many versions.
Which sea stories are good for students?
The Open Boat, A Descent into the Maelstrom and The Gold-Bug are staples. The Little Mermaid and How the Whale Got His Throat suit younger readers.
Which classic sea story is the shortest?
How the Whale Got His Throat, at under a thousand words. MS. Found in a Bottle is around three thousand.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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