Main character is a Shipwright

[melchi]

I a quick google search doesn't give a lot of relevant results. Mostly discovered shipwright is a last name for some people. But that doesn't mean the main character is a shipwright. I'd be nice to find a story centered around building a ship or ships.

Anyone know one off the top of their heads?

 

[hippoman]

Are you looking for a specific story you saw before that has a shipwright as the main character, or do you want recommendations of novels where the main character builds ships?

 

[melchi]

No specific story, I've found some but looking for others.

 

[John_Owl]

not really what you're looking for, but Brotherband by John Flannagan features an MC that helped at the ship dock until he could take combat training, and he makes minor tweaks to his own ship pretty much the entire series after.

 

[3guanoff]

For building ships and boats, try these:

• George Blake's "The Shipbuilders"
• Daniel Gumbiner's "The Boatbuilder"
• Robin Hobb's "Ship of Magic" - not quite a shipwright but ship building aspects
• Onetti's "Shipyard"

 

[melchi]

For building ships and boats, try these:

• George Blake's "The Shipbuilders"
• Daniel Gumbiner's "The Boatbuilder"
• Robin Hobb's "Ship of Magic" - not quite a shipwright but ship building aspects
• Onetti's "Shipyard"

Maybe I'm just too picky, but the last one is the only one that looked interesting to me. I would have like the ship of magic one, but it seems like a multi main character story.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I've only seen this as short stories - and the ships were space ships, not sailing vessels; only novel I've seen even close to this was "The Skylark of Space" where two of the crew were also designers of the Skylark itself.

Though I could kind of see doing something like this in the old Spelljammer setting for AD&D (fantasy Ships in Spaaaaaace...); heck, there were, IIRC, three or four Spelljammer novels written so maybe one of them had a shipwright character.

 

[melchi]

I think there are 6 stories in the cloakmaster series. I'm surprised elaine cunningham wrote one of them. (She's a favorite author of mine) Looks like WOTC published a space pirate spelljammer book just this year bringing the number up to 7. Neat!

 

[3guanoff]

Maybe I'm just too picky, but the last one is the only one that looked interesting to me. I would have like the ship of magic one, but it seems like a multi main character story.

I'd say the strongest book of the bunch is the Onetti one. It certainly is not fantasy or wish-fulfillment, but its realism makes for a fulfilling read.
For one, the protagonist is a former pimp. He is an adult, not a twenty-something overgrown child.
Most importantly, Onetti is good at painting a scene: the people, their feelings, their surroundings, their actions. His descriptions are superb. He has the power of taking you right there, to make you see, hear, and smell the same as the characters.
Even if it does not prove as catharsic to you as it did to me, you will at the very least gain some very quotable aphorisms.

If this were a webnovel, I suppose it might be tagged "Psychological", "Slice of Life" and "Tragedy".

 

[Goodmann]

Looking back a long way, Swiss Family Robinson built a ship near the end of the book. Shipwrecked on a deserted island -- a precursor to the isikai genre; they're found at the end, so not a perfect comparison. Still a decent read, which is the definition of a classic!