Retail Price $19.95
Size 5x8
Format: Trade paperback
Category: Biography, Historical
ISBN 1-933698-02-0
ISBN 13 978-1-933698-02-1

Original publication date: 1913
Walter Noble Burns: 1872 - 1932

A Year With A Whaler

At the turn of the twentieth century, Walter Noble Burns shipped out on his first whaling voyage. The freshness and excitement of the experience, so keenly recorded in this memoir, is soon balanced by his growing experience in the ways of whalers. As Burns learns more about the men he's shipped with, he also discovers the mammals that he and his fellow sailors hunt — both for income, and for sport. The power, intelligence and, more than all, courage of these hunted animals is clearly described by this young eyewitness. None prove to be easy prey, and whether in success or failure, their personalities come through as vividly as those of the men who hunt them.

The sea and its moods are as much a character in this memoir as the author's hodgepodge of shipmates. A stream of anecdotes, character sketches, and settings make this story as real as if the author was here to share it today.

A Year with a Whaler is a year among men, animals and the sea itself, as seen through the eyes of an innocent who went to sea to find the man he was to become.

About the Author

Walter Noble Burns, born in 1872, shipped out from San Francisco on the whaling bark Alexander in 1890, after responding to a help wanted ad for "...the adventure of the thing." A greenhorn who was sorely tested during these adventures in the Bering and Chukchi Seas, Burns returned to write this amazing memoir detailing the life of a whaler — from the waterfront clothiers who charged a dear price for clothing, to the excitement of jumping into a small boat to chase the great ocean mammals, to the wonders of the Alaskan native culture. Burns originally published this book in 1913, long after he had left the Alexander never to set foot on a whaler again.