Michael Nash
(editor)

Blubberhead Press

RRP: $55.00 HB 161pp

Robinson first went to sea as a ship’s boy at the age of eleven. He saw his first whale killed shortly before his thirteenth birthday, and rounded Cape Horn soon after. At the age of fifteen, when he was working for a season at a Tasmanian bay-whaling station, his father died unexpectedly and due to that family’s financial circumstances Robinson felt that he had “no alternative but to follow a seafaring life”.

Captain Robinson is a vivid account, particularly for its detailed description of nineteenth century whaling, but also for its matter-of-fact description of an extraordinarily varied working life. It is a valuable new addition to Tasmanian maritime history.