Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A Game of Chance: The Story of British North American South Seas Whaling

A Game of Chance: The Story of British North American South Seas Whaling

Kirkpatrick, Andrea

Hardcover

ExplorationGeneral World History

Publisher Price: $53.99

ISBN10: 1039158641
ISBN13: 9781039158641
Publisher: Friesenpr
Published: Jul 26 2023
Pages: 540
Weight: 2.53
Height: 1.19 Width: 7.00 Depth: 10.00
Language: English
It's almost impossible to imagine spending eight months at sea without once putting foot on land. But that's exactly what whalers experienced when playing the dangerous game of chance, hunting down leviathans for oil and bone-all for a lay, or share, of the vessel's spoils. A Game of Chance is the first comprehensive, in-depth study of British North American South Seas whaling. Author Andrea Kirkpatrick takes readers on a series of fascinating and sometimes fantastical journeys as she chronicles in great detail the story of a largely forgotten industry that operated out of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick ports from the 1760s to 1850.

Kirkpatrick plumbed the depths of myriad logbooks and journals to piece together the often-murky tales of an astonishing number of ships. In this treatise covering a century of whaling, she shares details such as ownership, tonnage, voyages, captains' pedigrees, and names of crewmen, including nascent whaler Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick. Hoping for greasy luck, the men who manned these ships found both camaraderie and competition as they hunted the world's whaling grounds from Cape Horn to Kamchatka, many circumnavigating the globe during their careers. They battled squalls and high seas, scurvy and venereal disease, heartbreak and homesickness-and sometimes each other. Many never returned home, their bodies committed to the deep or buried on foreign land.

Written in two parts-landward and seaward-Kirkpatrick's clear prose and adoption of whaling lingua franca brings this high-risk venture to the fore with authenticity, newly revealed facts, and remarkable stories of adventure.

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