Final Voyage: A Story of Arctic Disaster and One Fateful Whaling Season [NOOK Book]

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Overview

A maritime adventure set against a lush historical backdrop, this is the story of one fateful whaling season that illuminates the unprecedented rise and devastating fall of America's first oil industry.

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Overview

A maritime adventure set against a lush historical backdrop, this is the story of one fateful whaling season that illuminates the unprecedented rise and devastating fall of America's first oil industry.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews
Nichols (A Voyage for Madmen, 2001, etc.) fashions a somewhat scattershot but engaging narrative around the waning days of America's whaling industry and its crash in the Artic by 1871. The author traces the spectacular rise and fall of the Massachusetts whaling industry through the success and failure of several entrepreneurial families and merchants, particularly Quaker communities in Nantucket and New Bedford, who formed "the world's first oil hegemony." Nichols surveys the establishment of Nantucket's whaling industry thanks to the good sense and enterprise of a handful of recalcitrant Quakers in the mid-17th century. These independent-minded early settlers observed the Indians' method of capturing migratory whales on shore, before the fisheries invented deep-sea whaling voyages which essentially emptied the seas of whales by the mid-18th century and forced the hunters to prowl farther afield, in the Pacific and Arctic oceans. In his erratically organized but still fascinating tale, Nichols focuses on the vast whaling fortunes of merchants like the Howland brothers of New Bedford, who outfitted many of the fanciest whaleships of the time and sent them off to the Artic, commanded by valiant captains like Thomas Williams of the Monticello. In the spring of 1871, more than 30 whaleships were abandoned in the packed ice after they were lured by the deceptively benign seasons of past seasons. The incalculable loss spelled the end of the industry, exhausted by overhunting of whales and walrus and disrupted by the Civil War. In addition, whaling had devastated the ecosystem, causing widespread starvation among the Eskimo people. Furthermore, rock oil had been discovered in Pennsylvania, andthe cotton mills offered a more reliable, less perilous living to many former whalers. Nichols's account is packed primary voices-e.g., the diaries of Williams's wife and daughter, who accompanied him on his fateful voyages-but the historical background eventually becomes more prominent than the thrills at sea. More intelligent history than breathless sea adventure. Agent: Sloan Harris/ICM

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781101148808
  • Publisher: Penguin Group US
  • Publication date: 10/15/2009
  • Sold by: Penguin Group
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 304
  • Sales rank: 328,777
  • File size: 433 KB

Meet the Author

Peter Nichols is the author of the national bestseller A Voyage for Madmen, and three other books. Before turning to writing full time, he spent 10 years at sea working as a professional yachting captain and has taught creative writing at NYU in Paris, Georgetown University, and Bowdoin College. He divides his time between Europe and the United States.

Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing 1 – 3 of 1 Customer Review

  • Posted April 3, 2010

    more from this reviewer

    More than Herman Melville and Moby Dick

    Despite the title, this book is about alot more than the disaster of the 1871 arctic whaling fleet. Mr. Nichols covers the rise of New England whaling from its roots in Native American fishing, through the religious intolerance of the Puritans against the Quakers(which led to the Quakers founding their own towns and the whaling industry), through to the downfall of this "industry" when competing with the new oil industry of the mid 1800's. Alomg the way he uses several prominent whaling families to descibe the rise and fall and how these families delt with the change of their businesses; the 1871 disaster being the penultimate conclusion to the New England whalers. An extremly readable book about a vital early American industry and its downfall.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 26, 2010

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    Posted December 23, 2009

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