Octopus Crowd: Maritime History and the Business of Australian Pearling in Its Schooner Age

A detailed study of the origins and demise of schooner-based pearling in Australia

For most of its history, Australian pearling was a shore-based activity. But from the mid-1880s until the World War I era, the industry was dominated by highly mobile, heavily capitalized, schooner-based fleets of pearling luggers, known as floating stations, that exploited Australia’s northern continental shelf and the nearby waters of the Netherlands Indies. Octopus Crowd: Maritime History and the Business...