Alamosa Public Library

"Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is considered by many readers to be the Great American Novel. But most don't know that since its appearance in 1851, it has been revised in substantial ways that alter its original meaning. Melville's masterpiece is described as a "fluid text": it exists in multiple versions, each revealing shifting intentions. The new Longman Critical Edition offers unprecedented access to the revisions that Melville made, the further...

Recounts the 1820 sinking of the whaleship "Essex" by an enraged sperm whale and how the crew of young men survived against impossible odds. Based on the author's adult book "In the Heart of the Sea."

Following an incident with an escaped tiger, nineteenth-century London street urchin Jaffy Brown goes to work for Mr. Charles Jamrach, the famed importer of exotic animals, alongside Tim, a good but sometimes spitefully competitive boy. Mr. Jamrach recruits the two boys to capture a fabled dragon during the course of a three-year whaling expedition to the Dutch East Indies. They succeed in catching the reptilian beast, but when the ship's whaling...

The journal of a teenage boy aboard a whaling vessel, relating his winter in Siberia and numerous other adventures.

In this two-part made-for-TV retelling of the legendary Herman Melville tale, Ishmael, sole survivor of the lost whaling ship The Pequod, relates the tale of monomaniacal Captain Ahab 's self-destructive obsession to hunt and slay the elusive great white whale, Moby Dick, who disfigured him, forcing his tired and mutinous crew to travel the seas until they find it.

In 1897, whaling in the Arctic waters off Alaska's coast was as dangerous as it was lucrative. And in that particular year, winter blasted early, bringing storms and ice packs that caught eight American whale ships and three hundred sailors off guard. Their ships locked in ice, with no means of escape, the whalers had limited provisions on board, and little hope of surviving until warmer temperatures arrived many months later. Here is the incredible...

The only full-length novel by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" was first published in 1838. It is the story of a boy from Nantucket, Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship, the "Grampus", with the help of his friend Augustus, the ship captain's son. Pym and Augustus experience many unexpected adventures and misfortunes at sea, including mutiny, violent storms, cannibalism, and the destruction of the ship. Eventually,...

When Lyddie Berry's husband is lost in a whaling disaster, she becomes the dependent of her ruthless son-in-law, who tries to take everything she and her husband had worked for.

A trouble-shooting 19th century seaman is trying to discover why so many whaling ships have been disappearing of late. Teaming with a scientist and a diver, they set sail to investigate. They are promptly captured by the megalomaniac Captain Nemo, who skippers a lavish, scientifically advanced submarine.