The Greenlander

Description for THE GREENLANDER by Mark Adlard:

THE GREENLANDER is a wonderfully old-fashioned novel, the type of superb book we remember from childhood---such as TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, perhaps, or CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS. Like them, THE GREENLANDER is about a young man and his coming of age at sea, and an extraordinary tale it is. The time is the nineteenth century, when every youth dreamed of shipping out with the whaling fleet. The voyage is from England to the Greenland Sea.

At the center of this remarkable novel stands Arthur Storm, less than twenty, an apprentice aboard the WILLIAM SCORESBY SENIOR. Arthur is strong, handsome and innocent, in the midst of men who have spent their lives with the sea: Mr. Nellis, the wild, red-headed specksioneer, who commands the butchering of the whales; Mr. Dryden, the precise second mate, who teaches Arthur the intricacies of his craft; Peter Gill, a dangerous man surrounded always by a strange sick-sweet smell; Jim Richardson, who tries his best to save Arthur's life; and Blackie, a woman from the Shetland Islands, who actually does. Mark Adlard has give us a superb cast of characters...and scenes no reader can forget: how Arthur finds Ann Paylor at the shore, her hand trapped in the rocks as the tide rises; how a shark swallows Him Richardson's jet cross and Jim tries to get it back; how the small whaleboat is lost at sea and how it is found; how the WILLIAM SCORESBY SENIOR is frozen in Arctic ice and what the men do to survive.