Preface
To conceive of this book was not difficult. While transcribing the hand-written memoirs, fascinating to me, of an American elephant sealer of the mid-nineteenth century (subsequently published in the Mystic Seaport Museum American Maritime Library series as Master of Desolation), I combed the shelves of that haven to maritime researchers, the G. W. Blunt White Library at Mystic, for a general history of the North American sealing industry.