Close Quarters by William Golding

This book continues the sea journey of Edmund Talbot, a younger son of an aristocrat on his way to Australia to earn some money in hopes of eventually occupying a pocket borough back in England. The ship becomes becalmed--and in the midst of the general disaster, Edmund falls in love. Edmund is a more sympathetic character than he was in the first novel, and there's a lot of beautiful prose. I especially enjoyed Talbot's meditations on the ways that nautical metaphors have infused the English language.