Whalemen Adventurers
by William John Dakin D.Sc., F.Z.S.
Whalemen Adventurers is a history of whaling in the South Seas, Australia and New Zealand from 1789 to the 1930's. With later developments are summarised in the forward.
Ranging from the days of sail to modern international efforts for the control of whaling, Professor Dakin draws on whalers' log-books and other sources to give vivid pictures of the excitement of the chase or - to select one dramatic incident - how it feels to be on a sailing-ship when the pots of boiling whale oil catch fire.
Not the least of the book's attractions is the way it lights up, with colourful and often turbulent history, such long-settled places as the Sydney suburb of Mosman, to which the over-ripe try-pots were removed from the present site of the Opera House; Ben Boyd's Twofold Bay; Port Elliott and Victor Harbour; Portland, Victoria, where the colonising Hentys followed the whalers; Hobart, where the Derwent estuary "swarmed with Right whales"; and Fremantle, where John O'Reilly organised the escape of the six Irish convicts in the American whaler 'Catalpa'.
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