Follow the Whale

 Preview 

This charming book is not about what whalemen read, but rather about good reading about whales. While presenting a broad picture of the history and literature of whaling, Sanderson does offer a caution: We still don't know very much about anything, and our current ideas on the past are grotesquely warped in certain respects. Our cultural background in western Europe bequeathed to us a singularly lopsided view of ancient history and a strangely biased opinion of our own importance. Europe has been regarded by Europeans for over a thousand years not only as the hub of the universe, but also as the fountainhead of civilization. In point of historical and geographical fact, it is nothing more than a large, rugged peninsula at the west end of Eurasia, the greatest land block on earth, and the womb of culture, as possibly also of modern man himself. One, two, three, or even four thousand years of ascendancy by Europe or any other part of the world is of little real significance in the over-all sweep of history, and even our history is now being discovered to be much more ancient than was previously supposed possible. Stone Age man in Europe, and his more cultured counterparts in other continents, was not nearly so stupid and primitive as we used to think. Jewelry was traded between Ireland and Crete two thousand years before Christ; the Koreans used ironclad ships centuries before we did; Indian princes sailed the open oceans with seven hundred retainers in one ship before the Greeks had invented a fore-and-aft sail; and rorquals were shot with harpoon guns a thousand years before Svend Foyn initiated the modern whaling period. What is more, all kinds of people were roving the oceans from continent to continent millennia before the peoples of western Europe had so much as put a mast in a coracle. Not until the lateness of our own times is appreciated, can any real concept of the past be obtained. And when we come to the history of the whales, we have to start thinking in altogether different terms again. In order to gain a proper perspective, therefore, let us turn from contemplation to action and follow the whale. (p. 12-13)

Books Afloat & Ashore: a History of Books, Libraries, and Reading among Seamen during the Age of Sail.

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p. 4: In 1631, when Captain Thomas James fitted out his vessel in Bristol for a voyage in search of the Northwest Passage, he purchased ‘A Chest full of the best and choicest Mathematicall bookes that could be got for money in England; as likewise Master Hackluite and Master Purchase, and other books of Journals and Histories. [see C Miller, ed. Voyages of Captain Luke Fox of Hull, Hakluyt Soc. London 1894, p. 265-67, 606 p.]

Jack in the Forecastle; or, Incidents in the Early Life of Hawser Martingale.

 Preview 

Sleeper was an American sailor, journalist, and politician who was Mayor of Roxbury, Mass., and a member of the Mass. Senate. As a novelist he used the pseudonym of Mawser Martingale, and I suspect this book is autobiographical fiction. He went to sea as a cabin boy in 1809, age 15, and the book is about his first command in the merchant marine in 1821.

From the Deep of the Sea, Being the Diary of the Late Charles Edward Smith M.R.C.S., Surgeon of the Whale-ship

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The whaling voyage of the Diana occurred in 1866-67, during which the ship was trapped in the ice during the winter. Smith was surgeon aboard the whaler, and something of a puritan. In the words of the editor: Here we have an account straight from the pen, while the heart was still palpitating from some narrow escape or from what seemed at the time certain destruction.

Cruising in the Antarctic.

 Preview 

Recounts a whaling journey from Odessa to Antarctica in 1952-53 in a flotilla of 16 ships. Rather typical Soviet narrative with great harmony, a few problems heroically overcome, and excellent discipline:

The Lord’s Librarians: The American Seamen’s Friend Society and their Loan Libraries 1837-1967

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p. 1 Abstract: "The Lord's Librarians" describes in new detail the activities of the American Seamen's Friend Society in distributing loan libraries to merchant and naval ships for over 130 years. Based on the archives of the Society in the G.W. Blunt White Library at the Mystic Seaport Museum, the study examines the history of the Society in its efforts towards moral improvement of seamen, fostering temperance, reducing licentiousness, encouraging Sabbath worship and observation, countering swearing, and promoting thrift and financial responsibility among sailors. It examines the largely evangelical collection development policies for these compact 40-45 volume library boxes, and attempts to locate the surviving boxes and surviving books from these libraries. It ends with some unanswered questions which deserve further study.

The Cabin Boy’s Log: Scenes and Incidents on a New Bedford Whaler, Written from the Journal as Kept by the Lad on a Three Years’ Voyage in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

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p. 18: Nov. 1866, preparations for the trip of this 15-year old included writing material, a New Testament, and the Episcopal Prayer Book. No indication throughout that he ever used them. Elsewhere there are several passages about pastimes, scrimshaw, boat models but nothing about reading. Notable for the cruelty of the captain to the cabin boy and the sailors.

A History of the American Whale Fishery.

 Preview 

Tower tells us nothing about reading provision aboard whalers of the American fleet. The book, however, does provide an excellent account of the history and bibliography of whaling for its time and its decline by the end of the nineteenth century.

Torrey’s Narrative, Or, The Life and Adventures of William Torrey. Written by Himself.

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p. 152, on conflicts between missionaries and Marquesas natives: The Otaheitean and Marquisian languages are so nearly alike they could converse without an interpreter. Mr. Daylia, in one of his meetings, said much about the good land and a bad land, telling them if they would be good and pray they would go to the good land, when they died. This he explained in a manner suited to their understanding. One of the chiefs jumped up and asked if the missionary who died at Nukuhivah (an English missionary who died about two years before) had gone to that good land. Mr. Daylia assured them he had, when, unwilling to believe it, they sent four men to that island, (about fifty miles) to get some of the bones. At the expiration of five or six days they returned, bringing bones with them; and at the next meeting, when Daylia was again telling of the good land, they set up a shouting, calling him a liar and showed him the bones. They told him he had been driven from his own land and had come to live with them, and he might stop preaching about his good land and his bad land, for they would not believe him. In vain were his remonstrances with them. They told him if he would climb a lofty cocoa-nut tree, which stood near, and jump among the rocks unhurt, they would believe him.