The Hunted Whale
James P. McGuane
Expertly curated and beautifully shot, this magnificent photo essay takes the viewer to the New England ports of a fledgling America as it struggled to dominate a global industry. Amazing facts, explanatory notes, and tales from the sea, representing the fruit of years of research, accompany James McGuane’s over 250 masterful photographs. McGuane looks to identify the various motivations that turned ordinary men into whale hunters. He discovers adventure, greed, courage, escape, gullibility and ignorance.
The book also includes a riveting firsthand account of the hunt, excerpted from naturalist Robert Cushman Murphy’s Logbook for Grace, a diary he kept of his time aboard the whaleship Daisy in 1912. With The Hunted Whale, McGuane delivers an engrossing and humane snapshot of a now-vanished age that helped forge the American nation as we know it.
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About James P. McGuane
Reviews for The Hunted Whale
Eric Jay Dolin, author of Leviathan "Jim McGuane’s The Hunted Whale is a labor of love, a comprehensive yet intimate study of American whaling under sail, in the shape of a stunning photographic essay."
Joan Druett, author of Island of the Lost and In the Wake of Madness "McGuane covers every aspect of whaling lore, from life aboard whaling ships and descriptions of the hunt taken from nineteenth century journals, to surveying the kind of people who made up a crew and the often brutally designed tools of their trade…. Readers looking for a simple but rich overview of whaling will find it in this appealing and informative volume."
Booklist "Gorgeous photographs… The reader turns over page after page in awe."
Mary K. Bercaw Edwards - Mystic Seaport Magazine