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PROLOGUE

THE PACIFIC OCEAN, 1848

IN ALL HIS YEARS SAILING THE WORLD’S OCEANS, CAPTAIN Horatio Dobbs had never known the sea to be so barren The captain paced the quarterdeck of the New Bedford whaling ship Princess, gray eyes darting like twin lighthouse beams to every point of the compass The Pacific was a disk-shaped blue desert No spouts feathered the horizon No grinning porpoises danced off the bow No flying fish skittered above the wave tops It was as if life in the sea had ceased to exist

Dobbs was considered a prince in the New Bedford whaling hierarchy In the waterfront bars where hard-eyed harpooners gathered, or in the parlors of the rich Quaker shipowners on Johnny Cake Hill, it was said that Dobbs could sniff out a sper mutiny had filled the captain’s nostrils of late

Dobbs had co to record each day of failure in the ship’s logbook The entry he had penned in his log the night before summed up the troubles he faced He had written:

March 27, 1848 Fresh breeze, SW Not a whale in sight Hard luck hangs over voyage like a stinking fog No oil in all of Pacific Ocean for poor ship Princess Trouble brewing in the fo’c’sle

Dobbs had a clear view of the length of the ship from the elevated quarterdeck, and he would have had to be blind not to see the averted gazes and the furtive glances from his crewmen The ship’s officers had reported with alar the forecastle crew had become more frequent and vehement The captain had instructed his mates to keep pistols ready and never to leave the deck unattended No hand had yet been lifted in y forecastle, the cra quarters located where the bow narrowed, e if the captain were to meet with an accident

Dobbs was six foot four and had a profile like a cliff He was confident he could put down a mutiny, but that was the least of his worries A captain who returned to port without a profitable cargo of oil had co the ship’s owners their investment No creorth its salt would ever ship out with him Reputation, career, and fortune could rise or fall on a single voyage

The longer a ship spent at sea, the greater the chance of failure Supplies ran short Scurvy and disease became more likely The ship’s physical condition deteriorated and the crew lost its edge Putting into port for repairs and supplies was risky Men n on to a more successful vessel

The whaling expedition had gone downhill since the crisp autu new ship had pulled away fro send-off Dobbs was bewildered by the change in the ship’s fortunes No ship could have been better prepared for its e The Princess carried an experienced captain, a handpicked crew, and newly forged, razor-sharp harpoons

The three-hundred-ton Princess was built by one of the most reputable shipyards in New Bedford Just over a hundred feet long, the ship had a beaave her room to store three thousand casks that could hold ninety thousand gallons of oil in her hold She was built of sturdy live oak that could withstand the toughest seas Four whaleboats rested in wooden davits that overhung the deck rails Other land whaling ships, but the rugged craft could sail for years through nasty conditions that would have had their sleeker counterparts leaking at the seams

As the Princess left the dock, a spanking breeze had filled the great square sails that hung from the three masts, and the helmsman steered a course east out of the Acushnet River and into the Atlantic Ocean Pushed by steady winds, the Princess hadto the Azores After a brief stop in Fayal to load up on fruit that would ward off scurvy, the vessel had pointed its board the southern tip of Africa, rounding the Cape of Good Hope with no mishaps