Overview
In 1860 fourteen-year-old Nathaniel Ransom followed his five older brothers into the dank foc'sle of a whaling vessel. For fifteen years he hunted seventy-ton bowheads in Arctic waters, for the many uses of bone, blades of flexible baleen from the leviathan's enormous jaw, raised its value, even as petroleum replaced whale oil as a source of lighting. In 1871 Ransom survived the loss of thirty-two whaling vessels in the frigid waters off Alaska's Icy Cape. With him he carried a journal - and kept it, as he and his shipmates jettisoned weapons and warm clothing to save their very lives. His eyewitness account of whaling's brutal slaughter and sudden losses is enriched by the author's affection for an ancestor she discovered through his journals a century after his death.
Full Product Details
Author: Helen Hiller Frink
Publisher: Peter E. Randall
Imprint: Peter E. Randall
Dimensions:
Width: 18.30cm
, Height: 1.50cm
, Length: 25.70cm
Weight: 0.544kg
ISBN: 9781931807968
ISBN 10: 1931807965
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 02 March 2015
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order
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Reviews
An easy-to read book full of adventure that is sure to captivate any reader. . . A work of art that offers a fascinating contribution to maritime studies. Mallory James, <i><b>The Northern Mariner</b></i>
This book speaks powerfully to the pull of family history and the role of the individual. . . History is not only the big events and themes, but everyday life in which history is 'made' by otherwise anonymous and forgotten individuals simply doing what they must to survive . . . --James P. Delgado, Alaska History,
This book speaks powerfully to the pull of family history and the role of the individual. . . History is not only the big events and themes, but everyday life in which history is made by otherwise anonymous and forgotten individuals simply doing what they must to survive . . . James P. Delgado, Alaska History
(Ransom) in plain and forthright language. . . he makes a historic event come alive with the honesty of his comment. --Everett S. Allen, author of Children of the Light
Author Information
HELEN HILLER FRINK is descended from two families of Yankee whalers. When she embarked from Newington, New Hampshire on her first voyage, her mother told her never to fear seasickness, for she had salt water instead of blood in her veins. She is the author of These Acworth Hills, Alstead Through the Years, and Women after Communism; the East German Experience. Retired from Keene State College as Professor Emerita of Modern Languages, Helen lives too far from the sea in Acworth, New Hampshire.
