Annotated autobiographical articles by New Zealand and Tasmanian sealer, whaler and merchant mariner William McKillop (1865-1938)active 1880s-1930s. He was the principal source of information and inspiration for Will Lawson's books HARPOONS AHOY! (1937) and BILL THE WHALERR (1944).
Children are fascinated with sailing ships, lighthouses, whaling, shipwrecks, and mutinies, and these 50-plus activities will provide them with a boatful of fun. This activity guide shows kids what life was like for the greenhands, old salts, and captains on the high seas during the great age of sail in the 19th century: aboard square-riggers, clippers, whalers, schooners, and packet ships. Life aboard ship was an exciting subculture of American life with its own language, food, music, art, and social structure. Children will learn that many captains brought their wives and children aboard ship, and that kids who learned how to walk at sea often found it difficult to walk on dry land. The book begins with the China Tea trade in the late 18th century and ends with the last whaler leaving New Bedford in 1924. Kids will create scrimshaw using black ink and a bar of white soap; make a model lighthouse using a bike reflector, an oatmeal box, and a plastic soda bottle; and paint china with traditional designs using a blue paint pen and a basic white plate. Included are additional simple activities requiring common household objects that are sure to please busy parents and teachers alike.
At a time when global change has eradicated thousands of unique cultures, The Last Whalers tells the inside story of the Lamalerans, an ancient tribe of 1,500 hunter-gatherers who live on a remote Indonesian volcanic island. They have survived for centuries by taking whales with bamboo harpoons, but now are being pushed toward collapse by the encroachment of the modern world. Journalist Doug Bock Clark, who lived with the Lamalerans across three years, weaves together their stories. Clark details how the fragile dreams of one of the world's dwindling indigenous peoples are colliding with the upheavals of our rapidly transforming world, and delivers a group of unforgettable families.
In this "immersive, densely reported, and altogether remarkable first book [with] the texture and color of a first-rate novel" (New York Times), journalist Doug Bock Clark tells the epic story of the world's last subsistence whalers and the threats posed to a tribe on the brink. A New York Times Notable Book A New York Times Editors' Choice Winner of Lowell Thomas Travel Book Award Silver Medal Finalist for William Saroyan International Writing Prize Longlisted for Mountbatten Award for Best Book Telegraph Best Travel Books of the Year Hampshire Gazette Best Books of 2019 One of the favorite books of Yuval Noah Harari, author of the classic bestseller Sapiens, "on the subject of humanity's place in the world." (via Airmail) On a volcanic island in the Savu Sea so remote that other Indonesians call it "The Land Left Behind" live the Lamalerans: a tribe of 1,500 hunter-gatherers who are the world's last subsistence whalers. They have survived for half a millennium by hunting whales with bamboo harpoons and handmade wooden boats powered by sails of woven palm fronds. But now, under assault from the rapacious forces of the modern era and a global economy, their way of life teeters on the brink of collapse. Award-winning journalist Doug Bock Clark, one of a handful of Westerners who speak the Lamaleran language, lived with the tribe across three years, and he brings their world and their people to vivid life in this gripping story of a vanishing culture. Jon, an orphaned apprentice whaler, toils to earn his harpoon and provide for his ailing grandparents, while Ika, his indomitable younger sister, is eager to forge a life unconstrained by tradition, and to realize a star-crossed love. Frans, an aging shaman, tries to unite the tribe in order to undo a deadly curse. And Ignatius, a legendary harpooner entering retirement, labors to hand down the Ways of the Ancestors to his son, Ben, who would secretly rather become a DJ in the distant tourist mecca of Bali. Deeply empathetic and richly reported, The Last Whalers is a riveting, powerful chronicle of the collision between one of the planet's dwindling indigenous peoples and the irresistible enticements and upheavals of a rapidly transforming world.
A history of African-American whalers between 1730 and 1880, describing their contributions to the whaling industry and their role in the abolitionist movement.
Capt. Nicholas Karas is both an ichthyologist and journalist. Throughout his life he has been intimate with the marine scene. He was born in Binghamton, N.Y. After four years in the Navys amphibious forces during the Korean Conflict he attended St. Lawrence and Johns Hopkins universities, where he majored in the biological sciences, and Syracuse University, where he received his masters degree in journalism. He joined the staff of True magazine, then Argosy magazine as outdoors editor. For nearly a decade after being associated with magazines, he became a fulltime freelance writer, traveling throughout the world and produced more than 500 major magazine features. Settling down, for 25 years, Karas became the staff outdoors columnist for Newsday (New York) and wrote more than 3,500 columns, then followed by 10 years as a freelance columnist for the N.Y. Times and several major magazines. Hunky is his first novel. Befriended years ago by James Michener, Karas asked him what to write about. He answered, write about what you know best. Hunky was the result. Hunky, is the story of two families who lived on opposite sides of the continental divide high in the Carpathian Mountains in 19th century eastcentral Europe. It spans three generations and a hundred years in their plight to escape more than a thousand years of oppression and servitude. Kurkis Reviewdescribed Karas uses of a unique journalistic genre, an adroit blend of history, biography, autobiography and fiction, that traces their Americanization in the coals mines and steel mills of Pennsylvania and the shoe factories of New York. The Last Whaler reveals Karas intense relationship with the sea. He has held his captains license for 30 years and regularly fished the off shore waters of Long Island. Few other waters have missed the cut of his keel. Karas and his wife Shirley live at the edge of land at Orient Point, N.Y.
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.