The Sea Lions Or The Lost Sealers Volume 2

The Sea Lions, or The Lost Sealers is one of James Fenimore Cooper’s late novels, published in 1849 just two years before his death. The book is one of his sea stories, drawing on the nautical knowledge he had acquired during his own youthful career in the United States Navy and on the kind of detailed maritime research that distinguished his sea novels from those of his less knowledgeable contemporaries. Volume two of the original two volume publication carries the story through to its conclusion in the dangerous waters of the South Atlantic.

The plot follows competing American sealing expeditions sent out from Long Island in pursuit of the rich seal hunting grounds described in a mysterious chart. The two captains, Roswell Gardiner and Daggett, become rivals across the long voyage south, with their ships eventually finding themselves trapped in the antarctic ice and dependent on each other for survival. Cooper uses the extreme situation to dig into questions about religion, morality, and the human capacity for both selfishness and grace under pressure that his Christian readers of the era responded to. The novel is sometimes considered Cooper’s most overtly religious book, with extended passages of theological reflection that some modern readers find heavy and others find central to the novel’s design.

Cooper’s prose is in the formal style of his time, which can take some getting used to. The dialogue is long, the descriptions of weather and ice are extensive, and the maritime technical detail is rendered with the authority of a writer who actually understood ships. Modern readers may find the religious framing more pronounced than they expected from the author of the Leatherstocking Tales, but the fundamental project of the book, a serious adventure novel about ordinary American men facing extreme conditions, comes through clearly.

For Cooper completists, for students of nineteenth century American sea fiction, or for readers interested in the religious culture of antebellum American literature, The Sea Lions is worth knowing. The novel was an influence on later writers including Edgar Allan Poe and, indirectly, on Herman Melville’s later sea fiction.