The Art of Whaling: Illustrations from the Logbooks of Nantucket Whaleships

For those interested, first-hand accounts from the survivors as collected in “The Loss of the Ship Essex, Sunk by a Whale”, and they are gripping. Edited by the same author as above.

Also throwing out the suggestion of Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America. I listened to the audio book on Audible and found it pretty interesting.

Great book! Super interesting analogy to Nantucket being the Silicon Valley of the era, pulling in top young talent from the whole east coast.

Avoid the movie at all costs.

Yes, great book. The story is completely fascinating and in addition great detail into the culture and process of whaling is given.

Came here to say that this is one gripping book

Wow, just yesterday I was thinking and discussing about how and why to ban tiktok for my kids, but this is great example of the tech being used to create something amazing! Really melts my heart when I see how humans can create marvelous things together, spontaneously!

This is a free audiobook of Moby Dick I listen to in the car when NPR is too gloomy. I have listened to it a lot lately. https://librivox.org/moby-dick-by-herman-melville/

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series is also rich with detail about sailing in the Age of Sail more generally (with some in-depth details about whaling in many of the books). I've been slowly working my way through them for the past year, and I feel like I've learned so much about what it took to sail a ship in those days.

I must say reading with modern perspective the at points gleeful descriptions of whaling was harrowing in a way that I don't think was intentional. 19th century really was quite a dark period in human history, I'd say far more so than the so called dark ages.

Among the classics I read, this was the only one I did _not_ like. It's an interesting read if one enjoys the setting of a whaling ship of that period. The story itself, I didn't find engaging at all.

I would note that trying to do inflation across these time period is tricky. An agricultural worker in England at this time would have made only about 18 pounds per year.

Your comment about the Quakers sent me googling:

https://chasingflukes.com/reading_guide-overview/glossary-co...

The Whaling-Quaker style of cursing is now very popular on the "Talk like a Pirate Day", especially here in Oregon

I recently received a copy of The Ashley Book of Knots and it has a fascinating narrative on the origins of the different knots intertwined with great illustrations. Apparently whalers were considered the upper echelon of seaman compared to their brethren that were pressed into service. Whalers had access to a lot more rope for leisurely activities (knotting).

The whales would dive, but whales have to breathe air so come back up again. My knowledge of this is based on Moby Dick, so take it with the pinch of salt necessary. It describes the experienced sailors being able to estimate how long the whale would be under water for, and look-outs on the larger ship could see where the whale broke the surface and head there to attack it in the smaller boats. Then they'd spear the whale with a long rope attached to the spear and the whale would dive under again with the spear stuck in it. As it dived, the pressure of the water would cause it more pain in the wound and it would have to resurface. Repeat, with a grisly finale. But yeah, it does seem pretty insane (and cruel) that anyone would attempt this.

It seems daft but walk into a field of cows some time.

There is a daft meme that whales are cool and intelligent (lol etc) and so on. They are both cool and demonstrably intelligent and yet they insist on doing the same thing that they have done for millenia. There is no way that evolution can kick in for a race that lives for so long, for such a destructive force that was deployed so quickly (us).

The article does not present whaling as an art. It goes to great lengths to emphasize the cruelty of whaling. The title refers to the variety of art associated more or less directly with whaling.