IEWS Demon of the Waters: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Whaleship Globe, by G regory Gibson, illusrrared by Erik Ronnberg (Lirde, Brown and Co., Bosron MA, N ew York N Y and London UK, 2002, 320pp, illus, notes, biblio, index, ISBN 03 16-29923-5; $24.95hc) T he grain of blood-stained sand ar rhe heart of rhis pearl of a yarn is rhe murderous career ofSamuel Comstock, rhe "strange young man," as Gibson calls him, who, despising family and friends and rhe privileged career open to him in rhe palmy days of New England whaling, decided to acr our a grisly fa ntasy in which he would seize a whaling ship, kill its officers, and rhen, after serding in on a Sourh Pacific island, kill rhe resr of rhe crew and reign as solitary monarch of a native kingdom, wirh women and slaves to do his every bidding. Comstock was a capable, arhleric yo ung man as well as a born killer, and in 1824 he seized rhe whaleship Globe, promising a select group of henchmen a life of ease, sexual delights and Iuxury ashore. His consran r rh rears of death to anyone who stepped our of line were effective wirh rhe resr of rhe crew; such rhrears carried considerable credibili ty in view of his casual killings. H e gor as far as rhe island, havi ng m urdered rhe captain and officers of rhe Globe, when one of his co-conspirators, seeming to have fa thomed his ulrimare purpose, murdered him. We learn close-up and apparendy very rrue-to-life (and death) details of this tale from Samuel's yo unger bro ther George, who survived the mutiny and its aftermath. George wro te a novel, A Voyage to the Pacific, published in 1838, fifteen years after the setting-out of the Globe on her fa ral voyage and, later, a biography of rhe brother he feared and coverdy admired. Gregory G ibson, rare book dealer of G loucester, Massachusetts, came on this sto ry thro ugh the journal of a crew member aboard rhe warship rhar rescued che survivo rs of the mutiny, after a small contingent including George had fled the island, sail ing the Globe to Sourh America. A considerable scholar in his own right, G ibson saw possi ble sources of Melville's inspiration for Moby-Dick in this journal,
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"sitting there in its own glow, having miraculously surfaced, like some ghost ship, with its own long-fo rgotten tale to rel!. " And herein lies the magic of G ibson's book, the gradual emergence into daylight of rhe ship, rhe trade she sailed in, rhe crews (remarkably yo ung) who manned these vessels, and the "web of consanguini ty, friendship and religion" that bound together rhe whaling community centered on Nantucket. W e also learn in living, accurate detail how rhe Globe was framed up in white oak in a Connecricu t River town, how rhe ship was sailed with the duties of crew members made clear, and rhe overriding demands of discipline and instant response to orders on which the safe navigation of these old wind machines utterly depended. We explore also the commercialworldofNewYo rk'sSourh Street, conducted in buildings that still stand today. With such stars ofour profession as the wooden-shipbuilder Llewellyn H owland to advise on shipbuilding, Matthew Stackpole to guide him through rich archives of Nantucket and M artha's Vineyard, the modelmaker Erik Ronnberg to offer his encyclopedic knowledge of old ships (and to provide the exquisite drawings that accompany rhe rexr), and rhe fo lklorist Stuart Frank to offer a deeply info rmed humane perspective on seafarin g and seafarers, G ibson has done more rhan tell rhe tale of a mutiny-he offers us a recreated world of seafaring under sail. T he reconstructed narrative of the cruise and mutiny is crisply told, bur it is in the boldly sketched and brilliandy colored evocation of the vanished wo rld of the whaling trade thar this reader found the greatest reward, in a book whose pages he will be sure to revisit in coming years. PETER STANFORD
The D ictionary of Nautical Literacy, by Robert M cKenn a (International M arine, Camden M E, 2001 , 4 16pp, illus, ISBN 007- 136211 -8; $29.95hc) The language of the sea and things pertinent to the sea is different from the language of everyday life ashore. Of course, there are lots of words we all use often that
find their o rigins in the nautical lexicon. T his volume, while not intended by its author to be complete, is not on ly filled with the common as well as the arcane, it is also fun to browse thro ugh, and I fo und that even rhe simple task oflooking something up took longer than I had expected as I paused just to thumb through the entries. T he listings include sh ip names, battles, people (real and fictitio us), movies (yes, movies), literature, geography, and more. It co ntains no t just wo rds, but phrases and expressions as well. If it has to do wich rhe sea, it stands a good chance of being listed. So me listings are whimsical-" submarine races" comes to mind-some are very serious-" Battle ofT rafalgar"-and some are esoteric-"Mohawk" (a US-flagged passenger vessel that collided with a Norwegian mo torship and sank in 19 3 5) . Regardless of the category, the entries are thoughtful, succinct, and clear. Some made me want to find our more, bur the defi nitio n shown was satisfactory to most needs. And M cKenna does a fin e job of explaining the significance and importance of each entry to the maritime culture. I would unflinchingly recommend to anyo ne with an interest in things nautical- whether current or historical- that this volume belongs on their bookshelf. You will find, as I did, that you will keep going back to it, just to browse-and learn . W ILLIAM H. WHITE Author, Warofl812 Trilogy Rumson, New Jersey Bandits at Sea, A Pirates Reader, edited by C. R. Pennell (University Press, New York NY, 2000 , 360pp, illus, notes, appen, index, ISBN 0-8147-6678- 1; $24.95pb) As Richard Pennell points out in his well-written introduction to th is collection of scholarly studies of piracy, since the publication of Treasure Island in 1883, and subsequent hij acking by J. M. Barrie, Gilbert and Sullivan, and H ollywood, pirates have been romanticized beyond reality. W hile the literature is vast, until very recendy few writers discarded the myth , and most of those depended heavily if nor solely on two basic source books: Exquemelin's ill-intentioned Buccaneers ofAmerica (1678) and Johnscm' s General History ofthe Pyrates (1 724), wlhich might or might not have been written by D aniel D efoe. As a result, piracy is considered a "soft" to pic by aca-
SEA HISTORY 10 1, SUMMER 2002