A Los Angeles Times Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007 A Boston Globe Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007 Amazon.com Editors pick as one of the 10 best history books of 2007 Winner of the 2007 John Lyman Award for U. S. Maritime History, given by the North American Society for Oceanic History "The best history of American whaling to come along in a generation." —Nathaniel Philbrick
The epic history of the "iron men in wooden boats" who built an industrial empire through the pursuit of whales. "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," Herman Melville proclaimed, and this absorbing history demonstrates that few things can capture the sheer danger and desperation of men on the deep sea as dramatically as whaling. Eric Jay Dolin begins his vivid narrative with Captain John Smith's botched whaling expedition to the New World in 1614. He then chronicles the rise of a burgeoning industry—from its brutal struggles during the Revolutionary period to its golden age in the mid-1800s when a fleet of more than 700 ships hunted the seas and American whale oil lit the world, to its decline as the twentieth century dawned. This sweeping social and economic history provides rich and often fantastic accounts of the men themselves, who mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, scrimshawed, and recorded their experiences in journals and memoirs. Containing a wealth of naturalistic detail on whales, Leviathan is the most original and stirring history of American whaling in many decades.
Eric Jay Dolin is the best-selling and award-winning author of numerous works in maritime history, including Leviathan, Rebels at Sea, and Black Flags, Blue Waters. He lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
Table of Contents
Introduction 11 Arrival and Ascent, 1614-1774 John Smith Goes Whaling 17 "The King of Waters, The Sea-Shouldering Whale" 30 All Along the Coast 41 Nantucket, the "Faraway Land" 63 The Whale's Whale 75 Into "Ye Deep" 90 Candle Wars 109 Glory Days 119 Tragedy and Triumph, 1775-1860 On the Eve of Revolution 139 Ruin 149 Up from the Ashes 165 Knockdown 188 The Golden Age 205 "An Enormous, Filthy Humbug" 253 Stories, Songs, Sex, and Scrimshaw 275 Mutinies, Murders, Mayhem, and Malevolent Whales 282 Disaster and Decay, 1861-1924 Stones in the Harbor and Fire on the Water 309 From the Earth 335 Ice Crush 342 Fading Away 353 Epilogue: Fin Out 370 Notes 375 Select Bibliography 453 Illustration Credits 461 Acknowledgments 463 Index 467
"An exhaustive, richly detailed history of industrial American whaling.... A real taste of the vile life aboard a whaleship and a cleareyed analysis of the cutthroat tactics of the whale-oil trade." —-The New York Times
