“The Cruise of the ‘Cachalot’ is ranked next to Melville’s Moby Dick among the classic works on whaling. Rudyard Kipling wrote in a review at the close of the 19th century: “I’ve never read anything that equals it in its deep-sea wonder and mystery.”

Travel with young Frank Bullen as his ship sails round the world, passing the Cape Verde Islands, Tristan de Cunha, the Aldabra Islands, the Bonin Islands, Hawaii, Christmas Island, Vava’u in Tonga and New Zealand, where the crew visits the Bay of Islands, Pegasus Bay on Stewart Island and Bluff in Southland. Bullen records some fascinating descriptions of characters and events in his account, which will challenge the average reader's concept of whaling and the men who engaged in a now extinct lifestyle.

“Sailors are naturally and usually careless about the nature of the “articles” they sign, their chief anxiety being to get to sea, and under somebody’s charge. But had I been ever so anxious to know what I was going to sign this time, I could not, for the language might as well have been Chinese for all I understood of it. However, I signed and passed on, engaged to go I knew not where, in some ship I did not know even the name of, in which I was to receive I did not know how much, or how little, for my labour, nor how long I was going to be away. “What a young fool!” I hear somebody say. I quite agree, but there were a good many more in that ship, as in most ships that I have ever sailed in.”

332 pages, A5 format paperback. Illustrated.

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