Watch's Wild Cry: A Voyage Aboard the Whaling Vessel Clara Bell

At the age of nineteen, Robert F. Weir of West Point, New York, ran away to sea, where he spent the next ten years of his life. Assuming the pseudonym Robert Wallace, Weir sailed aboard the bark Clara Bell out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1855 for a voyage to the whaling grounds of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Upon the death of one of the Clara Bell‘s boatsteerers (harpooners), Weir was promoted to this position of great responsibility. Recording daily events aboard the Clara Bell o...