"The voyage of the F.H. Moore" and other 19th century whaling accounts / Samuel Grant Williams, J. Ross Browne, Capt. Charles H. Robbins, and Francis Allyn Olmsted ; edited by Greg Bailey.

"In 1873, 21-year-old Sam Williams embarked on a whaling journey on the two-masted F.H. Moore--he steered one of the smaller boats and when in range threw the harpoon. During the 16-month voyage, he kept a personal log and later reworked it into this never-before-published manuscript, now supplemented by additional research and relevant excerpts of the official logbook of the ship. Complementing this are excerpts from three other accounts of whaling voyages: 'Incidents of a Whaling Voyage' by Francis Allyn Olmstead (1841), the oldest in this collection; 'Etchings of a Whaling Cruise' by J. Ross Browne (1846), an expose of the whaling industry; and 'The Gam: Being a Group of Whaling Stories' by Capt. Charles Henry Robbins (1899), a personal story of nearly an entire life at sea. The four accounts open the 19th century world of whaling to modern readers in a realistic and unromantic way and illuminate the current worldwide debate on whaling."--