"When Ishmael sets sail on the whale-ship Pequod one cold Christmas Day, he has no idea of the horrors awaiting him out on the vast and merciless ocean. The ship's strange captain, Ahab, is obsessed with hunting down the famous whit whale, Moby Dick, and will stop at nothing on hes quest to annihilate his nemesis."--Cover.

'It was unnecessary for all to perish, when, by the death of one, it was possible, and even probable, that the rest might be finally preserved.' Travelling aboard a whaling vessel, a young stowaway is swept up in myriad misadventures - mutiny, shipwreck, cannibalism - narrowly escaping numerous brushes with death. This rousing story of a daring sea voyage also presents its antihero with a host of psychological dilemmas, and offers an important insight...

The Volunteer, a nineteenth-century Yorkshire whaling ship, becomes the stage for a confrontation between brutal harpooner Henry Drax and ex-army surgeon Patrick Sumner, the ship's medic, during a violent, ill-fated voyage to the Arctic.