A Whaler at Twilight: A True Account of Whaling and Redemption in the South Pacific, by Alexander R. Brash and Robert W. Armstrong. Lyons Press, 4501 Forbes Blvd., Suite 200, Lanham, MD 20706. 320 pp., illus., hardcover. $34.95
Available from The WoodenBoat Store
(www.woodenboatstore.com)
For anyone who came of age in the 1970s, as I did, whaling is arguably the one chapter of maritime history, among many contenders, that is absolutely the hardest to stomach. Ample sources have long romanticized the industry—“Nantucket sleighrides,” and all that. But those stories always sprang from the long-gone era when whaling was conducted by ships under sail, lowering open boats to hunt their prey under oars. By the mid-20th century, factory ships, cannon-fired exploding harpoons, and widespread extinctions and near-extinctions had absolutely nothing of romance about them.