Sea travel was an influential literary genre in Europe in the eighteenth century, and this genre subsequently influenced enlightened and Hasidic Jewish circles. As a result, the genre of sea narratives assumed a significant role in the rise of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature. This article considers the place of Yiddish sea narratives--adapted from Campe's Reisebeschreibungen and in Hasidic writings--in the early nineteenth century. Both enlightened and Hasidic authors shaped modern Yiddish and Hebrew prose.