Books: Rich & Dirty Business

THE SEA-HUNTERS (510 pp.)—Edouard A. Stackpole—Lippincoff ($7.50).

Captain George Pollard of Nantucket, Mass, had been out in one of the whaleboats himself, that day in 1820, when the whaler Essex began to founder. Nobody could have been more dismayed than Captain Pollard when he headed back to his stricken ship. "My God, Mr. Chase, what is the matter?" he cried. And from Mate Chase, bobbing with other survivors in a small boat, came the laconic answer: "We have been stove by a whale."*

The troubles of Pollard and his men were just beginning. For the...

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