Enoch's Voyage

In the summer of 1851, young Enoch Cloud left his Ohio home to sign up for a whaling voyage on the Henry Kneeland out of New Bedford, Mass. For 32 months, he kept a journal, recording life aboard ship. The voyage took Cloud across the Atlantic and around the Cape of Good Hope, then to New Zealand, Japan, Hawaii, the Pacific islands, around Cape Horn and home in April 1854. Edited by his great-great granddaughter, the journal details encounters with native peoples, mutinous crew members, and homesickness, storms and other dangers at sea. It is a vivid portrayal of whaling in the age of sail, when men hunted giants of the deep with hand-held harpoons. Cloud describes successes, failures and many narrow escapes. (Nov.)