Whaling

When the American shipbuilder Enos Bright constructed the Mentor in 1807 he had no inkling of the tale it would one day tell from its watery grave. Many ships faced harrowing voyages on the high seas, but this one stood out more than others. It was an expedition that turned into a disaster that few could have foreseen. Eric Jay Dolin brings this long-forgotten story back into the public eye. The author of 17 books that have largely focused on maritime history, he is a talented researcher and natural storyteller. ‘The Mentor,’ he writes, ‘is not just another example of a shipwreck during the Age of Sail. It is one of the most complex and intriguing of such stories ever told.

It is easy to assume that there is not much to be said about the history of the Atlantic before 12 October 1492, when Christopher Columbus reached the Bahamas. In 2005, the Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn published a little book entitled Atlantic History: Concept and Contours which said absolutely nothing about what happened before Columbus, whom he barely mentioned. Atlantic history meant for Bailyn, and the growing mass of Atlantic historians, the story of modern contacts between the four continents that face the Atlantic, especially the nefarious slave trade linking Africa to the Americas.