FROM NEW BEDFORD TO SIBERIA

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 1978

A not-very-fully fictionalized version of a young (fifteen at the outset) New Bedford whaleman's own account of his first and last voyage, begun in 1856. Shipping out on the Condor for a three-year stint, Daniel Hall is persecuted by the whip-happy captain, who finally beats him so severely that Daniel jumps ship--not in Hawaii where desertions are relatively common but in a Siberian bay, where he plans to wait for another whaler to pick him up. Instead, before he finally makes contact with a ship, Daniel spends most of the winter with Yakut Indians, whose shaman cures him of a feverish infection brought on by the captain's beating, and the remainder with a political prisoner in a Russian penal colony. Beatty makes disappointingly little of either the human encounters or the potentially dramatic adventures, but the facts of the case have an interest of their own.

Pub Date: Nov. 11, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION