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LOGBOOK FOR GRACE by Robert Cushman Murphy

LOGBOOK FOR GRACE

By

Pub Date: March 25th, 1947
Publisher: Macmillan

The author, a marine zoologist, at the American Museum of Natural History, writes of his trip to South Georgia in 1912, on a windjammer in search of whales. Here- for his wife- is the daily picture of the trip from Dominic southward to their goal, the Old Man and the crew, the contrasting experiences of weather, food, ports, and the many details of his work in collecting. There are red letter days and grey days, there is the spread of discontent and the days of shipboard calm. There are sharks, and whales- and more whales. There is the arctic life as they get to South Georgia, the sea elephants and sea leopards, the penguins and weeks of isolation. The Daisy gets her cargo, and homeward-bound there is the coming of scurvy and two deaths. In port-word from his wife. Filled with odd quirks, little touches, this chronicles a years' absence in personal manner, joins scientific information with human response to the daily events, the close companions. For this special market, there is not a little magic in the record, an intimate quality of things shared. Very nice indeed.