| View Larger Image | Final Voyage: A Story of Arctic Disaster and One Fateful Whaling Season | Hardcoverby Peter Nichols (Author)
| List Price: | $26.95 | | Price: | $17.79 | | You Save: | $9.16 (34%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | Putnam Adult | | Page Count: | 304 Pages | | Publication Date: | October 15, 2009 | | Sales Rank: | 107,481th |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780399156021
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
A maritime adventure set against a lush historical backdrop, this is the story of one fateful whaling season that illuminates the unprecedented rise and devastating fall of America's first oil industry. |
Amazon.com Review
Product Description In the summer of 1871, thirty-two whaling ships, carrying 12-year-old William Fish Williams, son of a whaling captain, and 1,218 other men, women, and children, were destroyed in an Arctic ice storm. In a rescue operation of unparalleled daring and heroism, not a single life was lost, but the impact on America's first oil industry was fateful and catastrophic. The harvesting of whale oil, which grew from occasional beachcombing into a multi-million dollar industry, made New Bedford, Massachusetts, the wealthiest town in the world. Quaker brothers George and Matthew Howland, the town's leading whaling merchants, believed they were toiling in a pact with God. As whale oil lubricated the industrial revolution and turned New Bedford into the Saudi Arabia of its day, this belief only grew stronger. But as their whaleships pushed ever farther into uncharted seas in putsuit of a fast-diminishing resource, this oil business was overtaken by new paradigms. When the search for cheaper energy sources produced a new and apparently inexhaustible resource--petroleum oil--the Howlands and many others did not see the change coming, or the devastating effect it would have on an industry that has flourished for two centuries. Almost overnight, it seemed, the world changed. Business and financial institutions collapsed. The Howland brothers saw their fortune vanish and ended their lives as paupers. For Willie Fish Williams, and the whalers and their families in the Arctic who watched as their floating community was crushed by the ice closing around them, that change came more swiftly. Drawing on previously unpublished material, Final Voyage splices together two compelling narratives: the Howland brothers' unprecedented rise and sudden fall with the fortunes of America's first oil industry--which eerily prefigures today's modern economic collapse-- and a 12-year-old boy's vivid observation of a maritime disaster set against the world's harshest seascape. Amazon Exclusive: Amazon Exclusive: Peter Nichols on the Collapse of the World's First Oil Industry As I was completing Final Voyage in the fall of 2008, the domino effect of the world's collapsing economies had begun. It was startling to read daily accounts of financial disasters, of the sudden impoverishment of wealthy institutions and financiers, while writing of the same process taking place one hundred and thirty years earlier. Final Voyage is in part about the collapse of the world's first oil industry - the whale oil business - and the fall from staggering wealth of the Howland brothers, Matthew and George Jr, of New Bedford, Massachusetts. For much of the 19th century, New Bedford was the Houston of the oil world, and the Howlands were its pre-eminent whaleship owners and oil merchants. At a time when the President of the United States' salary was $25,000, the Howlands were netting around $200,000 annually, with no income tax to pay. Like many, then and now, they didn't see what was coming. They wouldn't admit or recognize the inherent instability in their market or its resources, and when the collapse came, they were unprepared. After the fall of Lehman Brothers, in September of last year, it was impossible for me not to hear exactly the tone behind the words Matthew Howland wrote in letters to his family: "Hastings has failed." Hastings and Company was a New Bedford whale oil and candle manufacturer, one of the long-term bedrock commercial institutions of the town and its industry. The Howlands, along with many others, were deeply involved in its business and financial health, and they were devastated when Hastings went under. The failure sent shockwaves through their community, yet still the Howlands held fast and continued whaling. "The business of America is business" said President Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s. This was as true in the 1880s, the Howlands' time, as it is now. To men like Matthew and George Jr, who defined themselves and their lives by business, failure, insolvency, and finally the complete ruin that overtook them in the space of a decade, was accompanied by a shame akin to moral transgression. Both died paupers, bankrupt. Matthew's son, William Howland, made a good start as a textile manufacturer, but when his business also failed, he committed suicide. His son, Llewellyn Howland, had to leave Harvard after a single semester. A lifetime later, Llewellyn described to his grandson - Matthew's great-great grandson, Llewellyn Howland III - how he felt on being forced to withdraw from college because there was no more money for his education: "It was a nasty April day, raining, grey, bitter. I looked out of the train window and saw the old men picking through garbage in South Boston, and the ragged children playing in the streets. God! how it frightened me. The squalor of it, the hopelessness of being poor." The sight held a spectral terror for a Howland that was passed down through generations. "Don't ever forget," Llewellyn told his grandson, "how hard it is to rise, when you're really, truly down." |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 24 reviews)
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Too much meandering! by jjmazza (Marshfield, WI)  3 Stars
November 09, 2009
I bought this book on my travels without first having had the opportunity to review the comments by the consumers (readers) on Amazon. I enjoyed the brief history of the whaling industry and its place in New England's rich history during the 18th and 19th centuries. I particularly enjoyed the author's interposing in the narrative comments taken from the actual logbooks of some of the whale ships to corroborate his historical research. However, Nichols wandered from the whaling history to the religious persecution of the Quakers in New England in the 17th century to the discovery of oil in Western Pennsylvania, and the human interest story of the Howland family in New Bedford.
The back of the book's dust cover is very misleading and if one is anticipating this is going to be an exciting, hair-raising, spine tingling adventure of the final voyage of a 19th century whaling ship and crew on the open seas, you will be disappointed. The narrative of the incarcerated whale fleet in the Arctic Ice in 1871 doesn't even come into focus until the 15th and 16th chapters,(the book has 18 chapters)a grand total of 20 pages!
The book can hardly be construed as "one of the most gripping sea stories....", "a haunting story on the grandest scale", or "a terrifyingly relevant historical narrative". Quotes taken from the back of the dust cover!
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The Time Machine by Daniel B. Slocum (Seattle, WA USA)  5 Stars
October 23, 2009
Prepare to hop in the Time Machine. This story of "Arctic Disaster and One Fateful Whaling Season" is just absolutely RIVETING!! I love adventure books so much and this one goes somewhere near the top of my list. I lapped up Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, and Into Thin Air. Jack London is an all-time favorite, and I've enjoyed real life stories from mountaineers including Thomas Horbien. There is also a bit of Sebastian Junger in this work. Peter Nichols creates an 'edge of your seat' experience against the backdrop of the choppy waters of the 1870s. If you happen to enjoy the Discovery Channel show "Deadliest Catch" -- this is a must read. You will LOVE it. I give it five stars and I'm pretty picky with my stars. Buy it. You will NOT be disappointed. Oh, and buckle your seatbelt!
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"Ice boun on wone side and land on the other" by K. Nettles (Midwest)  4 Stars
October 22, 2009
More than an adventure story about one disastrous whaling season, Fatal Voyage traces the origins of New Bedford, the ascetic Quaker underpinnings that strongly influenced whaling culture, and the ever-increasing lengths to which whalers would go to hold on to the only way of life many of them had ever known. Arctic disasters or not, whaling was doomed as soon as oil was discovered in Pennsylvania. This was a fascinating peek into a little-known religious community and the lives of men at sea.
The museum at Mystic Seaport is crammed with scrimshaw and whalebone products fashioned by bored and lonely sailors. Nichol's portraits of these sailors and the conditions under which they served for years at a time add poignancy to these objects and fill me with awe at the delicacy of feeling that can exist even under such circumstances.
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NOT THE BOOK I EXPECTED by David Segrove (Phoenix, AZ United States) 3 Stars
October 21, 2009
I feel as though the title of the book is a bit of a misnomer. Though nominally about a whaling ship disaster in 1871, the book is far more a history of the rise and fall of the American whaling industry. In itself this is a very readable story, and Peter Nichols writes in a casual narrative that makes easy and enjoyable reading.
The narrative fateful 1871 trip that sailed in search of depleted whales and ended up icebound in the Arctic is woven within the story of whale oil boom that put New Bedford on the historical map. Whether it was due to lack of materials, which I suspect, or something else, the detail of the rise of the whaling industry is well-told and in-depth, but the "Final Voyage" itself feels glossed-over. There are a few bits and pieces, but it's very impersonal and left me with the "oh yeah, I forgot about that" kind of feeling. I ended up not caring terribly much and I think that is the fault of the author trying to make a story without embellishing it but without enough to fill more than a few pages.
I think the story might have been better told as the narrative of the whaling industry with a couple of chapters covering the "Final Voyage". I don't think the book would have been any less interesting for that, though it may have lacked the appeal that a disaster-oriented title and tag line give it.
Overall a good book and a worthwhile read, but not for the reasons one might expect.
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Not so much the Destruction of the New Bedford Fleet, but the Fall of Whaling by Todd B. Frary (Atlanta, GA USA) 4 Stars
October 16, 2009
"Final Voyage" is a fascinating glimpse into a pivotal event that marked the demise of the whaling industry and the rise of our modern petroleum-based economy. Many non-historians likely have forgotten that early economies were greased with whale oil. It burned in lanterns and was used in many industrial applications where now petroleum based products are instead used. Until the discovery of oil in the middle of the 1850s there were simply few alternatives readily available and the whaling fleet based in New Bedford made that town the equivalent of today's petro-dollar rich nations. By the dawn of the 1870s however, whales were becoming scarcer and whaling ships plied further and further afield to kill their valuable quarry. Petroleum was quickly making inroads with consumers and industry, but few know of the pivotal role that the winter of 1871 and the destruction of much of New Bedford's whaling fleet played in forcing the abrupt transition from whale oil to petroleum. Peter Nichols seeks to retell the events that led to the transitions, particularly the harrowing story of those 33 ships from New Bedford caught up in the Artic disaster.
In a sense "Final Voyage" is a bit like the television show "Dangerous Catch" in print; it chronicles the fleet caught in the treacherous Bering Sea off Alaska as summer abruptly ends, the weather turns suddenly and abruptly harsh, trapping the fleet in ice, which slowly entombs them and crushes them. Nichols draws on previously unpublished resources and a wealth of primary and secondary sources to retell not just the rise and fall of the whaling industry in New Bedford, but the tale of the fleet's destruction. While the tale of the fleet is quite harrowing and horrible most of the book instead focuses on New Bedford's rise and fall, making the title a bit deceptive. Rather unintentionally "Final Voyage" also becomes a cautionary tale that all of earth's natural resources are finite and should be carefully managed to avoid rapid depletion and that human greed often has sudden and unanticipated consequences. Don't expect this to be a harrowing account of life and death like Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by John Krakauer; but if you are aware it's a broader story with larger lessons you will be rather richly rewarded.
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