![]() ![]() These were hard men, in it for the money or driven by pasts they did not disclose. The crew assembles randomly, raggedly, as such crews really did, forming and dissolving for many reasons. ![]() Before doing this he says to the child: “I’m the fucker, me, I’m never the one that’s fucked.” Drax joins his ship, and it’s clear that if he has anything to do with it, the Volunteer is already marked for trouble. Next he beats unconscious and rapes a young boy whom he suspects of leading him into a trap. Within the first 12 pages he has killed a Shetlander who has crossed him in a bar. Drax is a brute, a vacuum into which men and boys are sucked and do not emerge alive. Henry Drax, a harpooner, has signed on for a six-month voyage on a Greenland whaler, the Volunteer, which is presently being trimmed and packed in harbour. ![]() Only the most agile or ruthless will survive, even though there are still whales to be hunted. Paraffin and coal oil are replacing whale oil, threatening ruin to shipowners who have invested heavily in their fleets. ![]() T he north water is where the whales are, and this novel is about the dying days of Hull’s whaling industry, in the late 1850s. ![]()
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