Ocean State Libraries

"Looking for adventure and a new life, Ishmael, the story's narrator, decides to find work on a whaling boat. On arriving at the Massachusetts harbour to begin his search, the only bed available is already half occupied by a "cannibal" named Queequeg. Although Queequeg has limited English, a friendship forms and the two men sign up for work together aboard the Pequod under the infamous Captain Ahab." --

The Volunteer, a nineteenth-century Yorkshire whaling ship, becomes the stage for a confrontation between brutal harpooner Henry Drax and ex-army surgeon Patrick Sumner, the ship's medic, during a violent, ill-fated voyage to the Arctic.

The epic history of the "iron men in wooden boats" who built an industrial empire through the pursuit of whales. Few things can capture the sheer danger and desperation of men on the deep sea as dramatically as whaling. Environmental writer Dolin 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...

A trouble-shooting 19th century seaman is trying to discover why so many whaling ships have been disappearing of late. Teaming with a scientist and a diver, they set sail to investigate. They are promptly captured by the megalomaniac Captain Nemo, who skippers a lavish, scientifically advanced submarine.

Consumed by an insane rage, Captain Ahab has but one purpose in life--revenge on the great white whale who maimed and disfigured him.

The dead of an Arctic winter. Whaling ships full of men, stranded in ice. Follow three rescuers in a race against time—and all odds—in this heartpounding true adventure. In 1897, whaling in the Arctic waters off Alaska's coast was as dangerous as it was lucrative. And in that particular year, winter blasted early, bringing storms and ice packs that caught eight American whale ships and three hundred sailors off guard. Their ships locked

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'It was unnecessary for all to perish, when, by the death of one, it was possible, and even probable, that the rest might be finally preserved.' Travelling aboard a whaling vessel, a young stowaway is swept up in myriad misadventures - mutiny, shipwreck, cannibalism - narrowly escaping numerous brushes with death. This rousing story of a daring sea voyage also presents its antihero with a host of psychological dilemmas, and offers an important insight...

Includes a brief biography of the author, thematic and structural analysis of the work, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas.

"A gothic debut inspired by The Odyssey and Moby Dick traces a century of a once-prosperous seafaring dynasty in New England, where the 15-year-old heir to a crumbling ancestral mansion studies the secrets of Greek history and navigation before embarking on a voyage that reveals her family's haunted history." --