YANKEE ADVENTURERS

 

I have been stalled for a couple of years

The apartment building I live in, in earthquake-prone Wellington, New Zealand, had to be earthquake-strengthened, and as I am on the Board of the property, it has been a busy time. It included a newsletter, HG Newsflash, to keep the shareholders informed, so I have been writing, but nothing maritime, and nothing for Old Salt Press.

But now the work is done.  The project is virtually over, so I am back to my love for books about the sea.  Hopefully, they will keep coming.  The first is just out, and tells the story of the first American capitalists, the men who quarried the seas and the coasts in the search for profit, their eyes fixed firmly on making a fortune for themselves and the owners of their ships.

It is called Yankee Adventurers, the Rousing Story of Americans in the Early South Pacific

And of course it is published by Old Salt Press.  Herewith the blurb:

They were flamboyant, grasping, and incredibly brave. 

They were seafarers who dared to challenge the storms of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn and burst into the Pacific. These amazing characters sailed where few others dared to go, in search of trade and profit.

China tea was worth big money in New York, Salem and Boston, but could only be bartered for silver, aphrodisiacs … or furs. So foraging for bêche de mer – sea cucumbers harvested from tropical lagoons, and then dried into a tonic for virility – or enduring terrible conditions on icy beaches in a brutal quest to harvest seal furs, was considered just part of the deal.

For a brief period, less than half a century, these adventurers succeeded brilliantly, but then history overtook them. Their markets and their prey dried up. But, in the meantime, they had altered the landscape of the South Pacific, for better or worse.

And this is their story.