From Amazon.com
Thomas Heffernan's
Mutiny on the Globe is the tale of 19th-century psychopathy on the high seas. In 1824, to satisfy a long-held dream of creating a desert island kingdom, Samuel Comstock, of Nantucket and New York City, led a ghastly mutiny aboard a whaler in the South Seas. Within days, Comstock, who had begun establishing his monarchy in the Marshall Islands, was murdered by his fellow mutineers. Some of the remaining seamen returned to America; others were butchered by Marshallese, and two were held in benign captivity by the natives for 21 months. Heffernan's account of the mutiny is oddly brief. The bulk of his narrative traces Comstock's inexplicably bizarre pre-mutiny life and the post-mutiny existence of the two marooned sailors. Though the self-consciously artful prose too often interferes with the primary narrative--as do the many tangential historical asides--the book does contain some haunting and macabre moments.
--H. O'Billovich
From Publishers Weekly
In yet another title about the Globe, Heffernan (Stove by a Whale) presents the violent story of Samuel Comstock, clever ruffian, cunning trouble-maker and all around hooligan, who led a bloody mutiny aboard the Nantucket whaler. After dispatching the captain and officers of the ship, Comstock's delusions of setting up a personal empire in the Marshall Islands (and conscripting the natives into his personal army) met an apex in madness, and the 21-year-old was gunned down by fellow mutineers shortly after reaching the Mili Atoll. In the ensuing power vacuum, six sailors fled to the ship, abandoning the other nine to face the irate natives; seven were killed while the remaining two were kept as "pets." Upon learning the fate of the whaler, the U.S. Navy mounted an unprecedented rescue mission and set a standard for policing the waters of the South Pacific. Historian Heffernan wonderfully revives the mutiny and its aftermath in this dynamic, tightly edited record that never shows the toil of labor. Working from a wealth of primary source materials (among others, varying accounts from Comstock's brothers, the two marooned mariners and senior Lt. Hiram Paulding, who helped lead the rescue), the author balances the narrative with well-placed insights and quips, keeping the action relentless and oftentimes terrifying. (Heffernan's description of mayhem Comstock causes in the Chilean port of Valparaiso is an unexpected diversion on a par with the violence of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.) With exhaustive appendixes and notes; illus. and maps not seen by PW.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
