by Nathaniel Philbrick
This is the account of the first documented destruction of a whaleship by a whale; the events that took place with 20 men starting out in longboats; and eight survivors being rescued more than three months later. Per author Philbrick, “The Essex disaster is not a tale of adventure. It is a tragedy that happened to be one of the greatest true stories ever told”. The writing is spellbinding, and captures the reader with the very first sentence: “I was eating supper, and stopped eating . . . Feeling totally guilty that I had food in abundance”. It is obvious why this book was a N.Y. Times Best Seller. This book truly gives the reader an insight into whaling and survival, like no other publication. Herman Melville liked this story so much, he wrote his own version entitled “The Whale”, later to be published as “Moby Dick”.
Edited by Harold Williams, 1964, The Riverside Press Cambridge, Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston
Capt. Thomas W. Williams and his wife Eliza Agelia (Griswold) Williams sailed together on more than one whaling voyage. Three of their five children were born on the open seas and raised on a ship. This book is a compilation of Eliza Williams’ diary of the voyage of 1858 – 1861, complete with Crew List, Outfitting Inventory aboard the Florence, a full rigged whaler of 123 feet and 522 tons. She describes in detail the Gamming, island visits, and events aboard ship involving the crew, the pigs, the chickens, etc.
The second section of the book covers the whaling industry as a whole during the Civil War. Capt. T. W. Williams ship Jireh Swift was captured by the Confederate cruiser Shenandoah and was burned June 22, 1865 without loss of life.
Capt. T.W. Williams (and family) lost the Hibernia to an underwater ram of ice flow on August 28, 1870. He (and his family) then sailed the Monticello and became one of thirty-two whalers lost to the ice in 1871. He returned to Point Belcher in 1872 aboard his Florence to do salvage of the 32 ships. Only the Minerva was fully salvageable which was sailed back to Honolulu by his son Stancel. Both the Florence and Minerva returned with full cargoes of oil and whalebone. This voyage was from William Fish Williams’ journal. William Fish Williams was born at sea during the 1858 – 1861 voyage.
Capt. T.W. Williams lost another ship (Clara Bell) along with 11 other whalers, to ice in 1876. He was rescued by his brother Capt. Lewis Williams aboard the Florence.
Capt. T.W. Williams last voyage as a whaler captain was in 1879 aboard his Francis Palmer back to the Arctic. He tested a small ‘catcher’ boat powered by steam that he had designed and built. The test proved successful.
The third section of this book is the detailed journal of William Fish Williams, Capt. the third son of T.W. Williams. William Fish Williams (age 14) served as a ‘boatsteerer’ aboard the Florence during the 1873-1874 voyage.
The Eliza Williams’ diary is 204 pages; the William Fish Williams’ journal is 138 pages; the 1871 disaster is from a speech that William Fish Williams gave to the Brooks Club, in New Bedford, Mass., 1902.
Ron Welch has kept a chronological log of every proper name of both people and boats mentioned in this book. The log identifies who, what, and when, sometimes with other details (i.e. detailed descriptions of scrim work being done). This list is available for those who are researching these events.
In this engrossing account, Dolin chronicles the epic history of the American whaling industry, which peaked in the mid-18th century as "American whale oil lit the world." Temporarily dealt a blow by the Revolutionary War, whaling grew tremendously in the first half of the 19th century, and then diminished after the 1870s, in part because of the rise of petroleum. Many of America's pivotal moments were bound up with whaling: the ships raided during the Boston Tea Party, for example, carried whale oil from Nantucket to London before loading up with tea. Dolin also shows the ways whaling intersected with colonial conquest of Native Americans—had Indians not sold white settlers crucial coastal land, for example, Nantucket's whaling industry wouldn't have gotten off the ground. He sketches the complex relationship between whaling and slavery: service on a whaler served as a means of escape for some slaves, and whalers were occasionally converted into slave ships. This account is at once grand and quirky, entertaining and informative. 32 pages of illus.
Retail: $55.00
This dictionary is certain to have a major and lasting impact on both the study and the collecting of scrimshaw, that ever-popular folk art of whalemen. In his ground-breaking work, Dr. Frank, Director of the Kendall Whaling Museum, has cataloged every known and recorded scrimshaw artist active through the early twentieth century. His persistent search has unearthed an immense amount of significant, often fascinating, information on these little-known artisans. This book is indispensable to the collector, curator, and scholar of maritime and folk art. The North American Society for Oceanic History named A Dictionary of Scrimshaw Artists the best maritime reference book published in 1992.
9.75-in x 6.5-in, 198 pages, 29 illustrations, cloth binding