History Main / BornUnderTheSail

* The Illhar'dro Clan of ''Webcomic/{{Drowtales}}'' were originally seafarers back in the Moons Age, but after being driven underground have turned into a ProudMerchantRace that still use turquoise blue as their primary color.

* ''Literature/TheFarthestShore'' has the Raft People, who live at sea and only come to shore to collect logs to build new rafts.

* As in real life, ''Literature/TheCrocodileGod'' slates the pre-colonial Tagalog tribe in the Philippines as skilled seafarers due to their Austronesian heritage, and [[BilingualBonus the name "Tagalog" literally means "people of the rivers."]] Their sea-god Haik is [[CharacterTitle the Crocodile God of the title,]] and the story's {{Mythopoeia}} deems him a folk-memory of Paikea the Whale-Rider from New Zealand, bringing this UpToEleven since the Maori are Polynesian. (As the RealLife folder and the page-quote from {{Disney/Moana}} notes, Polynesians were ''especially'' good navigators even among the Austronesians.)

** In ''Civilization V'', the Polynesians have an unique ability to embark on the ocean way earlier than any other civilization. In ''Civilization VI'', the Norwegians gain a similar ability.

** Later on it's revealed that Haik's sister is Hina, which also makes him an expy of Maui, the ultimate Polynesian seafarer.

* As in real-life, ''Literature/TheCrocodileGod'' slates the pre-colonial Tagalog tribe in the Philippines as skilled seafarers due to their Austronesian heritage, to the point where [[BilingualBonus their name "Tagalog" literally means "people of the rivers"]]. Their sea-god Haik is [[CharacterTitle the Crocodile God of the title,]] and the story's {{Mythopoeia}} deems him a folk-memory of Paikea the Whale-Rider from New Zealand, bringing this UpToEleven since the Maori are Polynesian. (As the RealLife folder and the page-quote from {{Disney/Moana}} notes, Polynesians were ''especially'' good navigators even among the Austronesians.)

* ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' has the ''Atha'an Miere'', commonly known as the Sea Folk, world-renowned merchants whose ships are central to their culture and who spend as little time on land as possible. Although they nominally govern several archipelagos, those lands are inhabited by a separate people and only visited by the Sea Folk for commerce.

* The Jorenians in the ''Literature/{{Stardoc}}'' series are known for developing wanderlust and taking large portions of their [[TheClan HouseClan]] on deep space cruises for months or years at a time.

* The Minotaurs in ''Literature/{{Dragonlance}}'' are known for being the most accomplished sailors and advanced shipbuilders on Ansalon, to the point that most minotaurs end up serving aboard a sailing vessel at some point in their lives.

* ''[[LIterature/TechnicHistory The Man Who Counts]]'' features a race of flying aliens, of which one major tribe spends most of their life on giant rafts, sailing across their world's seas.

* As in real-life, ''Literature/TheCrocodileGod'' slates the pre-colonial Tagalog tribe in the Philippines as skilled seafarers due to their Austronesian heritage, to the point where [[BilingualBonus their name "Tagalog" literally means "people of the rivers"]]. Their sea-god Haik is [[CharacterTitle the Crocodile God of the title,]] and the story's {{Mythopoeia}} deems him a folk-memory of Paikea the Whale-Rider from New Zealand, bringing this UpToEleven since the Maori are Polynesian. (As the RealLife folder and the page-quote from {{Disney/Moana}} notes, Polynesians were ''especially'' good navigators even among the Austronesians.)

* In ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'' the thirty three Green-Yellow Chanari tribes are the preeminent [[AlienSea silt sailors]] of Mars. Most sea trade on Mars is done through them, along with most of the piracy, and they are the only people who dare to hunt Silt Dragons, the largest vertebrate in the solar system.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Numenera}}'': The Redfleets, an organization of traders, explorers and small-time pirates. They revere the ocean, and dedicate their lives to exploring it both by ship and submarine to discover its many treasures. They have no interest in man-made things, however, and focus exclusively on natural treasures -- oceanic formations, islands, sea creatures and so on.

* Prior to uniting in order to achieve spaceflight, the Kig-Yar or Jackals of the ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' series were divided into pirate clans that raided one another on the seas of their homeworld of Eayn. Afterwards, they ended up forming numerous colonies on the asteroids surrounding Eayn and raided the ships of other species as SpacePirates before getting folded into the Covenant as mercenaries, though they still kept up pirating even after the Human-Covenant War.
* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'':

* ''VideoGame/WarCraft'': The island nation of Kul Tiras, whose contribution to the original Alliance was its powerful navy, which they had built up to protect their fleet of merchant vessels. Their national emblem is also an anchor.
* The Nautilus Pirates from ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'' are more or less a faction of old-school Earth {{Pirate}}s but RecycledInSpace. They start the game with a number of sea-related bonuses, including the technology to build aquatic bases. Their agenda is even listed as "Pillage and burn".

* In ''VideoGame/CrusaderKingsII'', any nation with a lot of coastline can become a serious contender at amphibious warfare, and merchant republics require coastal access to build trade routes, but the true sea kings are the Norse. All counties of Norse culture get free shipyards when the "Dawn of the Viking Age" event fires around 790 AD (and start with them in the 867 AD start date), while [[Myth/NorseMythology Germanic pagans]] (also chiefly Norse, though the Saxons follow the same faith) can sail up major rivers to raid inland and portage ships overland between them (letting them raid in the Black Sea, up the Danube to southern Germany, and into the Mediterranean by sailing through otherwise landlocked western Russia and Ukraine), and may declare county conquest wars against any coastal province (instead of merely ones on their own borders as other pagans, Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims can). They also have a slew of traits they earn by raiding.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} V'', the Polynesians have an unique ability to embark on the ocean way earlier than any other civilization. In ''Civilization VI'', the Norwegians gain a similar ability.
* ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'' has the Seafolk, who live in a flotilla of Pokémon-shaped houseboats and travel the seas nomadically in search of new wonders to bring back to Alola for trade. The Seafolk Village where they’re found isn’t even a true village so much as a system of docks, with the houses simply being the Seafolk boats that happen to be at anchor there when you visit.
* ''VideoGame/CivilizationBeyondEarth'' has the North Sea Alliance faction, a coalition formed from the British isles, the Dutch, and Scandinavia. They are one of two factions able to settle their first city on the water, and their unique ability increases the combat strength of oceanic cities as well as reducing the cost of moving them to acquire territory.
* In the Enroth subsetting of ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic'', (the) Regna(n Isles) were ''by far'' the dominant power on the seas -- their 'Empire of the Endless Ocean' moniker was mostly a boast, but it wasn't a completely empty boast (which was unfortunate for everyone else, Regna being proudly piratical). While Regna did suffer significant defeats at times, it was mostly when they got off the boats for coastal raiding -- ''Might & Magic VIII'' sank a good chunk of their navy[[note]]they gathered much of it in a bay by Regna proper as part of a blockade, and when the player characters get sent to find a way to break the blockade they end up smashing a super-cannon project, stealing the project notes, killing the lead researcher and hijacking the super-cannon prototype to sink every single ship in the bay[[/note]], but the next game in the franchise [[EarthShatteringKaboom blew up the planet]], so the consequences of that never really mattered.

** The Japanese
*** Subverted in that despite being an island nation, Japan actually was ''not'' very good at shipbuilding and naval warfare for most of their national history; they were simply too far away from everyone else in the world to make it worthwhile, most of their seafood was close to shore, and the islands weren't far enough away from one another to demand navigational skills. The one conspicuous time that they ''did'' invade mainland Asia, in the 1590's, they were crushed at sea by the Koreans...who ironically did fit this trope at the time. Double subverted in that after industrialization and modernization, the Japanese did rapidly become one of the top and most feared naval powers on Earth.

* As in real-life, ''Literature/TheCrocodileGod'' slates the pre-colonial Tagalog tribe in the Philippines as skilled seafarers due to their Austronesian heritage, to the point where [[BilingualBonus their name "Tagalog" literally means "people of the rivers."]] Their sea-god Haik is [[CharacterTitle the Crocodile God of the title,]] and the story's {{Mythopoeia}} deems him a folk-memory of Paikea the Whale-Rider from New Zealand, bringing this UpToEleven since the Maori are Polynesian. (As the RealLife folder and the page-quote from {{Disney/Moana}} notes, Polynesians were ''especially'' good navigators even among the Austronesians.)

* Polynesian's colonised Islands all across the South Pacific over the course of centuries.

* An empire based on dominance of the sea, seafaring and maritime commerce is called a ''thalassocracy'', the prime example being TheBritishEmpire.

* As in real-life, ''Literature/TheCrocodileGod'' slates the pre-colonial Tagalog tribe in the Philippines as "people of the seas and rivers," due to their Austronesian heritage. Their sea-god Haik is [[CharacterTitle the Crocodile God in question,]] and the story's {{Mythopoeia}} deems him to be a folk-memory of Paikea the Whale-Rider from New Zealand, bringing this UpToEleven since the Maori are Polynesian. (As the RealLife folder denotes, Polynesians were ''especially'' good navigators even among the Austronesian family.)

* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'': On the plane of Ixalan, even before fleeing to the continent of the same name, the ancestors of the Brazen Coalition pirates made their living from the sea, inhabiting a series of coastal city-states and gaining wealth from maritime trade. By the setting's present, the pirates have led an almost entirely maritime existence for more than most of them have been alive: while a few crews have claimed permanent island forts, most live exclusively on their ships as they sail Ixalan's seas. They don't have any leadership beyond their captains and admirals, their ships and fleets serve as the basis of their society's organization, and their only permanent settlement, High and Dry, is a CityOnTheWater made of hundreds of ships lashed to one another.

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** While Redguards are primarily known for being warriors, they are secondarily famous for being masters of sail, to the point that Hammerfell itself is referred to as "the Land of Sword and Sail".