Moby Dick (1851)

Ishmael's narrative offers the most exhaustive portrait of nineteenth-century shipboard labour ever written, detailing the perilous routine of the masthead watch, the butcher's work of cutting in and boiling blubber, and the terrifying speed with which a stray line or sudden squall can kill. Melville treats the Pequod as a floating factory whose crew must constantly battle relentless gales, indifferent oceans and Ahab's catastrophic defiance of nature.