Philip Hoare

This is a moving and sad survey of the great cetaceans and their fraught relationship with man. The subtitle "In Search of the Giants of the Sea" makes sense in the denouement of the author's concluding encounter with rare and beautiful examples at a remote location, but just as aptly it could be subtitled "Annotating Moby-Dick; or, The Whale" as the author so often quotes and amplifies details from the work and life of Herman Melville. The cruelties exacted on these species by humans are show more among the shocking material here, but expectedly so. Not so expected, by me, was the rectal origins of the sought after perfume base ambergris. This is just one surprise about the whale that Hoare, obviously educated on and awed by his subject, imparts on this most readable work on these animals and their history. show less

Part Mark Kurlansky and John McPhee, -- authors I love -- Eric Dolan has written an absolutely fascinating book about whales and the history of the whaling industry. Much as those authors bring quotidian things and events to life. It's also part literary criticism and biography.

The first whaling was done by settlers who copied the Indians dismantling of stranded pilot whales along the coast. This was succeeded by shore-based whaling as the value of whale oil became apparent leading to show more taxation and division of the spoils according to detailed rules. What happened, for example, when a whale washed up on the beach attached to a harpoon? Who "owned" the whale? This led to marking harpoons and lances, much as lobster fishermen do to buoys today, to help identify who might own a share.

Gradually, as the Indians, who had performed much of the labor connected to whaling, died off from diseases brought back by those same ships, and as the value of the product rose immensely, blacks were hired to work. The case of Prince Boston was to have profound implications nationally. He was an excellent boat steerer, and having returned from a voyage was due the princely sum of 28 pounds, a substantial amount. His owner, Swain, claimed the money belonged to him and when Roach, the ship's owner, who despised slavery, insisted on paying Boston directly, Swain sued. He lost in all venues. In the Mass. Supreme Court, Boston was not only awarded the money but also given his freedom.

Whaling leveled racial animosity. Escaped slaves would often seek out berths on whaling vessels as a way to earn money (they got equal wages with their white counterparts) as well as escape the depredations of the slave catchers. Most Nantucket whaling captains wanted nothing to do with racial animosity and valued their black sailors. There were exceptions. One Second Mate who became captain after the deaths of the Captain and his First Mate, decided he could make a lot of money by turning his ship into a slaver and sailed off to Africa where he obtained a load of slaves, a profitable voyage, indeed. Whale ships were designed to have lots of room in the hold making them well-suited for such evil transactions.

The story behind Moby Dick is interesting. Melville had signed on has a hand on a whale ship for a 1/175th share (the whole section on how they were paid and the pittance ordinary seamen earned is revealing.) During a GAM -- when two whale ships met in the ocean they would hang our for several days mingling crews and exchanging gossip -- Melville met a young man by the name of Chase who recounted his time on the Essex, a ship that was rammed by a large sperm whale and battered until it sank. The few crew members who survived did so by consuming their companions. (See my review of Nathaniel Philbrick's [book:In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex|17780].) Melville was so taken by the story he used it for, well, you know...

The heyday of whaling was the 1850's before the discovery of coal gas and kerosene as alternative lighting options. The predations of the confederate raiders Shenandoah and Alabama which preyed almost exclusively on the whaling fleet -- they couldn't shoot back so it was easy pickings, destroyed many ships, but the great ice-in of 1871 and 1876, when with typical white man hubris they had ignored the warning of the Eskimos in the Arctic, not only destroyed many ships, but badly hurt the insurance industry which had to take the brunt of the losses. (The story of of 100 whale boat trek to open water is quite a story in itself.) The ever-increasing availability of oil and its refinements spelled doom for the whaling industry, which diminished to nothing by the end of the 19th century.

BTW. You do NOT want to know how ambergris is formed and where it comes from.

Wonderful read. show less

"Ambasciatrici internazionali del potere indiscriminato della natura, le balene sono nazioni senza Stato, dotate di una forza che trascende la mera presenza fisica."
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Che piaccia oppure no, la conoscenza che abbiamo delle balene e, più in generale, dei cetacei è legata alla spietata caccia di cui questi enormi mammiferi marini sono stati oggetto nei secoli passati. Interi capitali e fortune economiche sono stati fondati sull'industria baleniera, a partire dagli avamposti costieri di Cape show more Cod e Nantucket.
Questo libro, devo dirlo, mi ha lasciato con un nodo in gola per il triste destino a cui sono stati condannati migliaia e migliaia di balene franche e capodogli
E la storia non è ancora finita: è notizia di appena un mese fa che il Giappone ha deciso di mettere fine alla moratoria e di riprendere la caccia alle balene (millantando scopi scientifici, pure!). Quale mercato abbiano nel 2019 fanoni, denti e olio di balena non è dato sapere, considerato anche che la carne di balena non viene più consumata.
La storia per questi giganti buoni per ora continua, mentre ci rendiamo sempre più conto che oltre essere minacciati dalla caccia, questi abitanti delle profondità oceaniche sono minacciati anche dall'inquinamento, dalla plastica e dalle reti da pesca delle intense attività antropiche.
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"Mentre la balena mi sfilava davanti, vidi il suo occhio: grigio, velato, senziente, disposto lateralmente, centro della sua coscienza. Dietro, tutto il resto era muscolo, che si muoveva senza sforzo. Quel momento durò per sempre, un'eternità di pochi secondi. Entrambi nella nostra nuda interezza, separati soltanto dall'oceano sconfinato." show less

Am I really about to recommend, wholeheartedly, a 420-page book about whales? Well... yes - even for readers who (unlike me) aren't already interested in mighty creatures of the deep.

I could say at this point that the book isn't solely about whales - there is also quite a lot about the life of Herman Melville, and of course Moby Dick (did you spot the reference in the title of this book?).

But honestly, it's mostly about whales - and the human relationship with them, from the incredible scale show more of the whaling industry to today's conservation tourism.

So why is it so good? Well, the subject matter is interesting - both the whales, and the mind-boggling history of the whaling industry, from levels of danger to the enormous scale. It also turns out that there is a lot that we still don't know about whales:

It was only after we had seen the Earth from orbiting spaceships that the first free-swimming whale was photographed underwater. The first underwater film of sperm whales, off the coast of Sri Lanka, was not taken until 1984; our images of these huge placid creatures moving gracefully and silently through the ocean are more recent than the use of personal computers. We knew what the world looked like before we knew what the whale looked like. Even now there are beaked whales, or ziphiids, known only from bones washed up on remote beaches - esoteric, deep-sea animals with strange markings which biologists have never seen alive or dead, so little studied that their status is 'data deficient'. New cetaceans are still being identified in the twenty-first century, and we would do well to remember that the world harbours animals bigger than ourselves, which we have yet to see; that not everything is catalogued and claimed and digitalized. That in the oceans great whales swim unnamed by man.

But most importantly, as I hope that extract shows, Hoare is a great writer, with a wide range of knowledge, the ability to put it into context for the reader, and a real sense of the poetry and mystery of the subject. There is a loose structure to the book, with different chapters introducing different species (blue, sperm, nar-, and many others I would not have been able to name before) - but mainly it feels like one of those great conversations that move seamlessly from one subject to another, so looking back you wonder how you managed to range so widely. show less