Where to start?!
Well, I've talked up Patrick O'Brian elsewhere. When a historical fiction series about the career of a Royal Navy captain fighting in the Napoleonic era in the years 1800-1815 gives such a sense of time and place that the reader gets the impression he could conn, navigate, and fight a sailing warship just from reading the series -- okay, with six weeks' hands-on experience added to freshen -- it's nothing but good!
Master and Commander, The Thirteen Gun Salute, Desolation Island, The Mauritius Command, et cetera. Twenty novels. I've read about a dozen.
"It's called a dog watch because it's cur-tailed!"
Oh yeah: there's a
cookbook. Everything from plum duff to sea-pie. Toasted cheese, too, I think...
Lobscouse and Spotted Dog: Which it's a Gastronomic Companion...
An old and rather witty classic, set in the same era but with an American hero who finds himself pursuing his girlfriend through the Haitian revolution against the French is Kenneth Roberts'
Lydia Bailey.
"Dastards! That's practically the exact word for 'em! Only one letter wrong!"