Ahab'S Trade: The Saga of South Seas Whaling - Tapa dura

Gladiator one minute, galley slave the next, danger and abuse, excitement followed by tedium - these were the lot of open boat whalemen in the South Seas for more than two centuries. This book tracks the rise and fall of this truly global industry and tells the stories of the men who made it. Although they whaled in American, British, French, Australian and New Zealand ships, their calling make them citizens of a separated, closed and isolated world. The book describes that world and its unique pressures.

ALLEN MAWER is the author of Fast Company, the definitive study of the clipper ship Walter Hood and, most recently, the critically acclaimed Most Perfectly Safe, the story of the British convict shipwreck disasters of the 1830s.