Leviathan
Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America is one of the most interesting books I've read in many, many years.Didn't know there was a whaling industry in America? Neither did I, but it lasted for over two centuries, and at its peak (around 1850), there were over seven hundred whaling ships. It was a huge part of American life, and this book is filled with an incredible amount of period detail, all beautifully woven into a narrative that makes it impossible to stop reading.
A few tidbits:
--"between 1768 and 1772...the sale of whale oil and baleen provided New England with its single largest source of British sterling...just over fifty percent."
--Nantucket declared itself neutral in the War of 1812 in an attempt to protect its whaling business.
--In 1849 (four years before Commodore Perry's arrival at Edo in 1853), the USS Preble sailed to Nagasaki to demand the releases of American whalemen captured after they desserted the whaleship Lagoda.
This is not a dry book at all. There are sections on whaling songs, scrimshaw (carving whale bones, some beautiful examples of which you can see here. There's also a section on the effect that the whaling life (years at sea, in some cases) had on relationships, with some very poignant period material.
Oh, and there's a whaling joke from the ninteenth century as well (I hope I remember this correctly). Corresondence was very erratic, obviously, when you were trying to send letters from a whaling ship back to the U.S., and just as erratic in receiving anything in return. So this is supposedly the exchange between a whaleman and his wife:
Dear John,
Where's the axe?
A year later, his wife received this reply:
Dear Nora,
Why do you need the axe?
Another year passed, and then John received this letter:
Dear John,
Forget the axe. Where did you put the shovel?
Whaling comedy.
If you have any interest in history, any interest at all, Leviathan is a wonderful, fascinating book. Oh, and here's an Amazon link: Leviathan.
<< Home