Immortal At Sea (The Immortal Chronicles Book 1) by Gene Doucette

 
     
    I don’t like boats all that much.
    I used to be okay with them.  Working as a fisherman was one of the first things I did that could qualify as a profession, back before there was anything like money.  This was for trade, because the idea of doing something for profit also didn’t really arrive until there was money.  The basic idea was, I would catch more fish than I could eat personally so that those fish could be used to get things from people who had a surplus of something else.
    It was an interesting progression.  We began as hunter/gatherers, but that was a really unpleasant way to live, especially when the head count started to go up and bigger and bigger game was needed just to keep everyone from getting lethargic.  From hunters we became settled farmers with land we considered ours, and that worked much better because then it was easier to divide up the responsibilities.  Some of us farmed, some of us protected the farms, and some of us left the farms and went out and hunted.  If we were near water, the hunting we were doing was usually fishing.
    We did not, at first, need a boat to fish.  We just had to wade into the nearest river with a sharp stick and wait for something to swim by that looked edible, hopefully before something came along that felt the same way about us.  It worked well, but was time consuming.  There weren’t a lot of fish close to the shore, and nets worked better than spears, especially in deeper water.
    That’s when boats came along.  The water got deeper, the nets became more efficient, and somebody figured out wood floats, and then it wasn’t all that long—all right that’s a lie, it was an achingly long time—before we were navigating them across the Mediterranean, and fishing with them on the Sea of Galilee and so on.  (I was a fisherman in Galilee for a little while.  Yes, it was the right time period, and no I never met him.) 
    I was okay on boats back then, for the most part, because I could almost always see land from where I was.  I’m not a great swimmer, but if I can see the shore, I’m usually a good enough of one to reach it.  I needed that reassurance—seeing the shore—because ultimately, I didn’t trust any boat to remain afloat.
    Here’s the thing: if you’ve been around for long enough, you’re bound to experience a few unpleasant things: fires, earthquakes, avalanches, volcanoes, sometimes all on the same afternoon.  Boats, I can tell you from first-hand experience, sink.  A lot .  Sometimes it’s because whoever made the boat for you made a crappy boat.  Maybe you made a crappy boat.  There is also the occasional psychotically malevolent storm that doesn’t care how well designed your boat is.  When you encounter something like that, and the thing you were relying upon to keep you alive ends up sinking, you really want to know you’re not too far from the safety of solid ground.
    Oh, and here’s another thing to worry about when you’re in a boat: sea serpents.
    *   *   *
    I’ve had arguments about this before.  Whales , I’ve heard.  Whales, and giant squid, and seals and all of that, and I’m willing to put my bet down on at least one or two of the things I’ve seen on the water being attributable to something mundane.  But I have also seen sea serpents with my own eyes.
    The first time was when I was a Carthaginian merchant.  I had a small fleet of ships that operated across the Mediterranean, moving goods from the African coast to Greece and the safer ports of the Roman Empire.  It was probably my first really successful business enterprise, and it only ended because it’s always been hard for me to settle down too long before people start to worry about the fact that I haven’t aged.
    I only very rarely rode my own boats.  The whole point of being a merchant is that you get to hire other people to do unpleasant things like combat nature in an environment humans aren’t really supposed to occupy, which