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[112]pp., 20 blank leaves, [1]pp., plus six landfall drawings (including one folding) and seventeen whale stamps. Small quarto. Original three-quarter calf with marbled paper boards. Boards scuffed and scraped, edges chipped, spine worn with two spots of worming. Occasional light stains, but interior quite clean. About very good. A well-illustrated and engaging log of the whaling ship Portland out of Newburgh, New York, and its travels to the south Atlantic, in particular the island of Tristan da Cunha and Cape Town, recorded by Alfred Brown, likely a mate. Although Brown claims ownership of this log, with several signatures and annotations throughout, the style is very similar to a log kept by the captain, Nathan H. Cook, back when he was a young mate aboard the Thames, though in a different hand (Cook also kept his own log of this voyage, which is now at the Nantucket Historical Association). Brown dutifully records the wind, weather, and location, lists duties going on aboard ship, and describes other ships or whales spotted. His hand is fairly clear, and along with drawings of the islands they visit and whale stamps, he embellishes the pages with a number of pen flourishes and ornamental devices. The log begins with their departure: "Saturday June the 23rd AD 1832. 1. At 10 AM got under weigh from our moorage in New York bay." Following a relatively smooth journey south for the first month, they crossed the Tropic of Cancer on July 26, and by the afternoon of July 28, spied their first "School of Sperm whales." They lowered the boats and succeeded in capturing and killing one. Overnight and into the next day, they "commenced.cutting our whale & at 5PM had him in & commenced boiling & squared the yards on our course South." They finished boiling the blubber two days later, secured the barrels and cleaned the decks, just in time to "fasten & kill" another sperm whale on August 1. They continued south and didn't encounter sperm whales again until August 12, but despite a long chase, they could not capture one. They would regularly "speak" (i.e., call out to other ships as they passed) other ships during their voyage, and even board from time to time. On August 24, they met the Victoria of Whitby out of London, "bound to St Salvadore laden with hard ware, the mate went on board & carryed letters." The next day, they crossed the equator and passed the Neptune out of Sag Harbor with "70 brls of Sperm" as well as "an English brig bound to the East Indies laden with small arms & ammunition." On September 3, the Atlas of Norwich "gave us notice of 16 cases of cholery [sic] in New York." The cholera epidemic of 1832 was mostly centered in the St. Lawrence River valley and Great Lakes region, but its impact was felt worldwide. Often, crews would be quarantined depending on where they where coming from, though Brown doesn't report anything of the sort in this log, although they do consult health officials when they finally return to Newburgh. On September 7, Brown reported seeing a "sulpher botom [sic] whale," now known as the blue whale, a rare sighting for whalers at this time. Melville wrote that he had observed them only from a distance in the southern seas, and while not much was known about them, whalers never chased them, due to their massive size and the fact that they "would run away with rope-walks of line." After capturing another sperm whale on September 13, they spoke with the captain of the Marcia out of Fairhaven, who reported that the John Adams "was sunk by a Sperm whale all hands lost except the Capt & one man & the Meteor of Hudson had lost their Capt taken overboard by a foul line fastened to a whale." The Portland reached Tristan da Cunha by the end of September. Tristan, along with Gough Island, Inaccessible Island, and the Nightingale Islands make up the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, lying approximately 1,732 miles off the coast of Cape Town. At the bottom of the page with the entry for Septemb. Seller Inventory # WRCAM57187
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