Whale Adventure - Willard Price

Willard Price's take on Moby Dick treads a little too close to its source material. Whilst referencing the fate of the Essex, which in turn inspired Melville's epic, Price nonetheless avoids any allusion to Ahab or the white whale in his own voyage of shipwreck and mutiny. In this fifth adventure, the boys embark on a voyage aboard the Killer, an old fashioned whaling ship to see how the grisly business was done in days gone by. Captaining the ship is the sadistic Grindle, a swaggering bully determined to make his crew's lives a misery. Also aboard is a scientist from the American Museum who wants to study the habits of whales.

Unlike the other books in the series, the prime focus here is on wholesale slaughter. It's the nastiest, bloodiest of them all and has the protagonists up to their knees in guts, reluctantly murdering the gentle giants of the seas. Price describes killer whales as malicious sea devils and goes on to relate numerous false claims of attacks on humans. We now know the killer whale to be a sensitive, peaceful animal. Later, the boys get to experiences the 'wonders', although in my opinion the 'horrors', of a modern factory whaler. The statistics of the annual number of whales killed by the industry are supposed to be impressive, yet the modern reader is more apt to turn away in disgust. A squalid little book that dips in quality from the rest.

Rating: 3/5