James Fenimore Cooper is justly famous for his frontier novels, his social criticism, and the creation of such enduring characters as Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook.  Lesser known but no less important are his contributions to maritime literature.  Of his thirty two novels, eleven are sea novels that address subjects as varied as colonial smuggling, Caribbean piracy, the China trade, and the Napoleonic Wars.  Cooper left a deep impression on sea literature.  Arguably, without Cooper’s sea novels, Moby Dick would never have been written.

Keynote Speaker: Nathaniel Philbrick, Founding Director of the Egan Maritime Institute.
He is the author of Why Read Moby-Dick, In the Heart of the Sea, and Sea of Glory.