Describes Murphy's voyage to the Antarctic aboard an American whaling ship, providing the details of seafaring life, the exotic animals Murphy encountered during the trip, and how he dealt with his separation from his wife.
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In 1912, a young naturalist named Robert Cushman Murphy was offered the opportunity of a lifetime – to spend a year on one of the last Yankee whaleships out of New Bedford, on a voyage to the Antarctic. During the voyage, Murphy not only collected specimens and took photographs, developing them in seawater, but kept a journal that was later published and became a bestseller. Now, Eleanor Mathews, his granddaughter, has now taken Murphy's diary and supplementing it with his own original photographs, to present this fascinating story for modern readers. As a portrait of seafaring life, of the whaling industry still under sail, and an account of a natural history expedition, it is a unique window into a vanished time.
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