In the Wake of Madness

A small notice in a Sydney shipping publication in 1842 hinted of a bigger story: A Massachusetts-based whaling ship, the SHARON, was putting into port due to desertions and the murder of its captain. Parts of the story were publicized at the time, but other pieces remained secret for years. Joan Druett decided to take a closer look at events that may have inspired Herman Melville's TYPEE and MOBY-DICK. She investigated the journals and personal logs written at the time to find the characters and motives behind the unusual events. Dennis Boutsikaris goes beyond a dry, factual reading to create a gripping drama of cruelty on the seas, as suspenseful as any of Melville's fiction. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

April 28, 2003
Nonfiction accounts about whaling tend to intone Melville's name like a mantra, and Druett's volume about the bedeviled 1841–1845 voyage of the Sharon
is no exception. By any measure, the expedition was a catastrophe, with mutiny, desertion and the mid-voyage murder of Capt. Howes Norris by South Pacific Kanaka tribesmen. "It is probably no coincidence," Druett writes, "that Captain Ahab found disaster in the same empty tropic seas where Captain Norris was killed." New Zealander Druett, a well-known maritime journalist (She Captains; Rough Medicine; etc.), doesn't focus on Norris's death. She's more interested in plumbing the "crucial questions" that "lurk unanswered," foremost among them: what caused the severe discontent among the crew? The answer turns out to be, unsurprisingly, Norris's beastly and sadistic treatment, mainly his frenzied persecution of black steward George Babcock. Druett draws on recently unearthed journals from the voyage to assemble a terrific account of an unusually eventful voyage. She has the good sense to maintain a light touch on the events, and manages a perfect balance between telling the story in an unfussy yet dramatic manner and honoring its complexity. Agent, Laura J. Langlie. (May 9)Forecast:True accounts of whaling voyages often do well. But is the market saturated by books like
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and
Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star Gazer: A Novel—not to mention the books of Patrick O'Brian—or is there room for Druett to sell well, too? With several whaling books to her name, she may have carved out a solid niche for herself. The book has been chosen as a Booksense pick for May.