Drawing from Michel Foucault’s definition of heterotopia, this paper examines how James Fenimore Cooper’s depiction of the sea as a heterotopic space challenges nineteenth-century systems of categorization. According to Michel Foucault, the ship is “the heterotopia par excellence,” this “other” place which provides a possible alternative to society’s rules and categories. In Cooper’s nautical fiction, racial, social, and national classifications are transcended by the category of sailors. His characters are either identified as landsmen or as seamen whose value can only be graded according to their experience and skills at sea. The dangers inherent in sailing partly justify this new binarism: at sea, safety and survival are the utmost priorities, thus discarding race, class, and nationality as unimportant differences among the community of the sea.