The Adventures of Jack: a Life on the Wave
by Charles L. Newhall
Written 1859 (1981 reprint)
Charles L. Newhall's The Adventures of Jack is one of many non-fiction whaling narratives published in ante-bellum America. Such works are the product of an era in which the expanding, labor intensive whaling industry recruited large numbers of young landsmen with somewhat more rudimentary educations. Some of these were gentlemen to whom a whaling voyage seemed to promise roman and adventure. Others, like Charles L. Newhall, were intelligent, literate youngsters forced by circumstances into harsh trade.
Newhall may have kept shipboard diaries from which he later drafted his book, for with a few exceptions the incidents and details he relates are quite accurate, more so than usual for someone writing a memoir. In any case, The Adventures of Jack has come to its own as an entertaining, authentic American whaling account.
