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Preface in 1828, the Duke of Wellington, hero of Waterloo, became prime minister of the united kingdom. in south america, uruguay gained national independence . japan suffered its second-worst natural disaster in 1828, when the sieboldtyphoon killed ten thousand people.on may 26,1828,in nuremburg, Germany,a mysterious child named kaspar hauser made headlines when he appeared out of nowhere, walking the streets in a daze. in the united states, andrew jackson defeated john Quincy adams in one of the bitterest presidential elections in american history. jackson’s candidacy established a new political party: the Democratic Party. composer franz schubert and painter francisco Goya died in 1828. jules verne, leo tolstoy, henrik ibsen, and Dante Gabriel rosetti were born that year. so was joshua laurence chamberlain of maine. chamberlain grew up to be president of prestigious Bowdoin college,located in Brunswick,maine, and he was later elected governor of that state. But he is most famous for his gallant defense, in july 1863, of a rocky hill called little round top at a small college town in Pennsylvania named Gettysburg. only seventy-six miles west of Brunswick, on the Piscataqua river that separates maine from new hampshire,another player in the american civil War began life in 1828.unlike joshua chamberlain,however,the ship William Badger received no honors for her struggle to preserve the union. in fact, she warrants only a brief paragraph in the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. a footnote buried in a forgotten file in a dusty corridor of the national archives, the William Badger nonetheless shares with chamberlain a life of color and achievement. The William Badger sailed—then merely floated—for thirty-seven years. she started life as a merchantman in the lucrative “cotton triangle”between new england, the southern cotton ports, and europe. she was later sold and converted into a whaleship. During her last years she served as a floating commissary in the union navy’s blockade of southern ports during the civil War, x / Preface housing one of the largest concentrations of african americans of any ship during the war. her deck was trod by staunch christians and suspected rapists ,by escaped slaves and the kin of the political elite,by blubber hunters and rats. more than once, she touched the seamy fringes of scandal. her name even crossed the desk of abraham lincoln’s first vice president, hannibal hamlin.The William Badger’s history helps illuminate a fascinating period of mid-nineteenth-century maritime activity,when sturdy square-rigged sailing ships canvassed the oceans and u.s. coastal waterways. in the days before digital electronics,telecommunications,and air travel,ships were the only conduits between international and coastal commercial centers. They carried valuable cargoes of mail,cotton,coal,coffee,salt,lumber,and textiles .They worked independently as floating fisheries.They ferried hungry yet hopeful immigrants to new continents. and they sometimes functioned as weapons of war. some of these ships were built to serve as merchant vessels, and others were built to work as whalers.frequently merchant ships were converted into whaleships and entered a much stranger, more dangerous world. only a few, like the William Badger, managed to function as merchantmen, whalers, and naval vessels during the american civil War. many books have been written about the nautical world of the nineteenth century. most of the best of these were written long ago and, although crucial to an understanding of that dizzying period, are dated and/or serve primarily as reference works. obed macy and alexander starbuck were two of the earliest nonfiction writers to explore the profession of whaling. macy wrote The History of Nantucket in 1835. it is, as the title suggests, a history of his island home and gives a concise overview of nantucket’s importance in the development of whaling . starbuck’s The History of the American Whale Fishery, first published in 1876,has achieved classic status and is a sort of bible of whaleships,their home ports,captains,and oil quotas.But it is chiefly used as a reference work today. judith lund’s more recent Whaling Masters and Whaling Voyages Sailing from American Ports: A Compilation of Sources (2001) is another excellent reference work. and in the fictional world, novelist herman melville devoted much of his epic Moby-Dick (1851) to an engrossing and literary discussion of whaling and whales. other notable books on whaling—despite their age and antiquated writing style—include alpheus hyatt verrill’s The Real Story of...

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