She Went a-Whaling: The Journal of Martha Smith Brewer Brown.

Brown, Martha Smith Brewer. Orient, NY: Oysterponds Historical Society, 1993.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

An example of a whaling captain’s wife going to sea with him. Whaling wives were usually known for their New England piety amidst the rough-hewn crews of 19th-century whaling ships. This is the diary of one of them, Martha Brown, who sailed from Orient, New York, aboard the Lucy Ann on August 31, 1847, on an eastward voyage round the world that eventually passed Cape Horn.

The Cruise of the Cachalot.

Bullen, Frank (Franklin) Thomas. Foreword by Curtis Dahl. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1947.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

This fictional description of the whaling life, written in the later 19th-century, should rank with Melville but devoid of Melville’s allegorical meanings. It is arguably a work of fiction by a fairly prolific novelist, though that is not certain. Although Cachalot was a maritime pseudonym, the work seems to be an accurate account of the trials and occasional pleasures of whaling. It was published in 1898, probably 25 years after his whaling journeys. Scattered references do show his fairly wide reading, but these likely did not stem from his youthful shipboard reading.

Fighting the Icebergs.

Bullen, Frank (Franklin) Thomas. London: James Nesbet & Co., 1910.
  • Maritime Reading
    Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

A novel about a whaleman and his foundling ‘son’ who learns everything about whaling from his ‘father’: the book is a good fictional introduction to whaling, a teetotaler tract (the father becomes sober as soon as he has responsibility for the boy), and a tearjerker. Towards the end of the book the author says that the boy was inculcated at an early age in the habit of reading. But there is a little bit of everything here: a happy crew converted from alcoholism, the mendacity of the owners, the death of the captain/father, the nip and sinking of their vessel, the success of the son, and his final marriage to a petticoat sailor.

Whaling Will Never Do for Me: The American Whaleman in the Nineteenth Century.

Busch, Briton Cooper. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1994.
  • Maritime Reading
    Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

An artful account of nineteenth-century whaling, with fascinating chapters on the overall industry, crime and punishment, relations and legal complications with US consular officials, desertion, religion, women (prostitutes and wives), ceremonial occasions, and an Honolulu riot.

Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex

Chase, Owen.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Owen Chase's memoir of the sinking of the Essex by a whale, which inspired Herman Melville's epic Moby-Dick and the film In the Heart of the Sea. Owen Chase was the first mate on the ill-fated American whaling ship Essex, which was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in the southern Pacific Ocean in 1820. The crew spent months at sea in leaking boats and endured the blazing sun, attacks by killer whales, and lack of food. The men were forced to resort to cannibalism before the final eight survivors were rescued. Chase recorded the tale of the ship's sinking and the following events with harrowing clarity in the Wreck of the Whale Ship Essex: "I turned around and saw him about one hundred rods [500 m or 550 yards] directly ahead of us, coming down with twice his ordinary speed of around 24 knots.

Such is the Antarctic.

Christensen, Lars. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1935.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Christensen was from a Norwegian whaling family who took three expeditions to Antarctica to study conditions of the whaling industry at the time. He owned his own whaling ship, the M.T. Thorshaven, which he used for these trips. It is an engaging account from the perspective of a businessman, sentimentally attached to whaling. There is little about reading on these trips but a few indications of materials available. The book is notable for its discussions of the history of Bouvet and Norwegian attempts to occupy the island, despite its unsuitability for any whaling purposes and its only apparent use as a meteorological station. He also discusses the exploration of Enderby Land, and Riiser-Larsen’s discovery of Queen Maud Land.

Sailors’ Life and Sailors’ Yarns

Codman, John . By Captain Ringbolt [pseud.] New-York: C. S. Francis, 1847.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

A journalistic kind of composite by a somewhat pious and rather strict naval disciplinarian. The following extracts some may read as the comments of a urbane writer of sound but severe morals; I see them as those of a pompous ass.

A Voyage to the South Pacific and Round Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean, for the Purpose of Extending the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries….

Colnett, James. London: W. Bennett, 1798.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

James Colnett was an officer of the British Royal Navy, an explorer, and a maritime fur trader. He served under James Cook during Cook's second voyage of exploration. Later he led two private trading expeditions that involved collecting sea otter pelts in the Pacific Northwest of North America and selling them in Canton, China, where the British East India Company maintained a trading post. Wintering in the recently discovered Hawaiian Islands was a key component of the new trade system.

An Arctic Whaling Diary: The Journal of Captain George Comer in Hudson Bay, 1903-1905.

Comer, George. Edited by W. Gillies Ross. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1984.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

A straightforward and not too revealing journal of Hudson Bay whaling at the beginning of the 20th century, just as Amundsen was coming through on his NW Passage. Comer was commanding the American whaler Era at the end of the whaling era. Has a few interesting book notes:

Pursuing the Whale: A Quarter-Century of Whaling in the Arctic.

Cook, John A. With an Introduction by Allan Forbes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Semi-autobiographical homespun yarns by a Provincetown whaleman and his career from 1868 to 1916, aboard many vessels including the Charles W. Morgan. They are interesting stories but not too revealing of the author. Cook’s wife often accompanied him on his journeys. In 1894, he was Captain of the bark Navarch which wintered at Herschel Island during that year in company with other whalers and other women.

Ned Myers; Or, A Life before the Mast.

Cooper, James Fenimore. New Edition. Edited by J. Fenimore Cooper. Two Volumes. New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1854. [First published in 1840.].
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

An 1840 Cooper work in which he served as amanuensis in telling the narrative of Ned Evans attempting to “lay before the world the experience of a common seaman,” such as Cooper himself knew, and which follows that pattern of degradation and conversion. I confess to an early impression that the work was more novel than narrative, and it certainly is an hybrid genre of edited narrative, or a semi-imaginary reconstruction. The repeated cycle of debauchment does become tiresome.

Two Years before the Mast. A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea.

Dana, Richard Henry, Jr. New-York: Harper & Brothers, 1840.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Depicts the life of the forecastle seaman on a merchant vessel in 1840. Published anonymously, Dana was an educated gentleman who presented himself as a common seaman intending to “present the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is,—the light and dark together.” (p. 4)