or Round the World after Sperm Whales
by Frank T. Bullen, First Mate
This of course is the classic whaling story. It is a good companion to the fiction of Moby Dick, and provides a proper grounding into the whaling industry. After a boyhood in the streets of London, at the age of twelve Frank Bullen went to sea, sailing in many merchant ships as well as the Whaler Cachalot before he left seafaring for authorship ashore. First Mate of the Cachalot, he was born in 1857 and died in 1915. The Cachalot of the title is both the name of the ship and another name for the Sperm Whale, the killing of which is the whole purpose for this voyage. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, (especially in the early part of the century when Bullen was in the trade) this industry provided a vast quantity of products for the American and world consumer. Everything from oil for lamps (including the lamps of China) to bone for women's corsets came from this giant mammal. The discovery of petroleum of course, did much to eliminate the need for this industry as the meat was never a first priority as it would be in the whaling fisheries of Greenland. Another event would also prove to be the undoing of this practice however, and this is outlined briefly in the Bullen's Introduction. As he puts it;". . .the advent of the civil war let loose among those peaceable cruisers the devastating Alabama , whose course was marked in some parts of the world by the fires of blazing whale-ships. . . From this crushing blow the American sperm whale fishery has never fully recovered. When the writer was in the trade, some twenty-two years ago, it was credited with a fleet of between three and four hundred sail; now it may be doubted whether then numbers reach an eighth of that amount." Rudyard Kipling wrote a letter to him as the book was being published and said, "I've never read anything that equals it in its deep-sea wonder and mystery; nor do I think that any book before has so completely covered the whole business of whale-fishing". . First published in 1897. Our edition contains several added whaling woodcuts contemporary with the time as well as a pocketed chart of the track of the Cachalot .
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