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.
Fighting the Icebergs.
Bullen, Frank (Franklin) Thomas. London: James Nesbet & Co., 1910.
- Maritime Reading
Whalemen's Reading
Preview
The Cruise of the Cachalot.
Bullen, Frank (Franklin) Thomas. [Foreword by Curtis Dahl]New York: Dodd, Mead, 1947.
- Maritime 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 it hardly reads like fiction. 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.
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.
The Log of a Sea-Waif: Being Recollections of the First Four Years of My Sea Life.
Bullen, Frank (Franklin) Thomas. New York: D. Appleton, 1899.
- Arctic Reading: General
Preview
p. 20: There were no books on board of reading matter of any kind, except the necessary works on navigation on the captain’s shelf; so it was just as well that I could take some interest in our surroundings, if I was not to die mentally as most of the sailors seemed to have done…. they seemed totally ignorant of anything connected with the wonders of the sea.