Toilers of the Sea (French: Les Travailleurs de la mer) is a novel by Victor Hugo published in 1866.

[1] Hugo uses the setting of a small island community to transmute seemingly mundane events into drama of the highest calibre.

Les Travailleurs de la Mer is set just after the Napoleonic Wars and deals with the impact of the Industrial Revolution upon the island.

[2] The story concerns a Guernseyman named Gilliatt, a social outcast who falls in love with Deruchette, the niece of a local shipowner, Mess Lethierry.

Gilliatt eagerly volunteers, and the story follows his physical trials and tribulations (which include a battle with an octopus), as well as the undeserved opprobrium of his neighbours.

In thick fog, Clubin sails for the Hanois reef from where he can easily swim to the shore, meet the smugglers, and disappear, giving the appearance of having drowned.

Gilliat appears in front of the people as the rescuer but he declines to marry Deruchette because he had seen her accepting a marriage proposal made by Ebenezer Caudry, the young Anglican priest recently arrived on the island.

In the end, with all his dreams shattered, Gilliat decides to wait for the tide sitting on the Gild Holm'Ur chair (a rock in the sea) and drowns as he watches the Cashmere disappear on the horizon.