Ahab's Trade: The Saga of South Seas Whaling - Softcover

G.A. Mawer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1865084476 ISBN 13: 9781865084473

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000

Synopsis

Gladiator one minute, galley slave the next; danger and abuse, excitement and tedium were the lot of the open-boat whalemen in the South Seas for more than two centuries. This book tracks the rise and fall of this first truly global industry, telling the stories of the men who made it. Although they whaled in American, British, French, Australian and New Zealand ships, their calling made them citizens of a separate, closed and isolated world, unlike that even of other seamen. The book describes that world and its unique pressures.

About this title

About the Author

Allen Mawer, one of Australia's rising maritime historians, immersed himself in the history and literature of south sea whaling for two years before setting out to write Ahab's Trade. He is the author of Fast Company and the critically acclaimed Most Perfectly Safe, the story of the British convict shipwreck disasters of the 1830s.

From Publishers Weekly

Mawer provides an (at times overly) exhaustive account of South Sea whaling, a lucrative commercial enterprise that had its heyday in the early 19th century. Readers will learn everything they ever wanted to know about whaling: the tools of the trade; the techniques for tracking and hunting whales; the methods for extracting whale oil; the difficult relationships among shipowners, captains and crewmen; the fluctuating economics of the whaling trade and its long decline into the 20th century. Nantucket and New Bedford were the twin thrones of America's whaling fleet during the 19th century. As Mawer tells it, British trade restrictions and the depletion of local fisheries forced Yankee whalers south onto hunting grounds near Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii. Mawer's dispassionate economic analysis of whaling lends a dose of reality to an industry often romanticized. With the emergence of the petroleum industry after the Civil War, the glory days of whaling were over. But the allure of whaling remained, at least in the literary imagination. The author meticulously describes the epic battles of whale against man, citing the famous 1820 sinking of the Essex, which became a source for Melville's whaling masterpiece, Moby-Dick. What Mawer's account lacks, especially when compared with Melville's (an unfair comparison, but inescapable), is the human drama of whale hunting; there are no individuals or events to unify these disparate elements into a compelling whole. Mawer, while scrupulous in detail, fails to elevate readers above the tangled minutiae of a bygone craft, leaving them out to sea. Illus. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1865084476
• ISBN 13: 9781865084473
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English