Accurately and vividly describes in stirring narrative early America's most romantic and picturesgue industry: the terror of uncharted seas, the perils of rounding the Cape of Good Hope into the Pacific Ocean, the conflict of a few men in open whaleboats with the colossal sea monster, the danger of the chase, hunger, mutiny, shipwreck, storms, boredom and triumph; how they whaled, the rules of the game, the weapons, the heroism in victory and defeat, the conversion of blubber into oil, and interminable four-year whaling voyages...