Thrilling Adventures of the Whaler Alcyone

THRILLING ADVENTURES OF THE WHALER ALCYONE (1916) This volume comprises the autobiographical adventures of George Barker, a Boston music instructor and former police officer, recounting his seafaring and terrestrial exploits as a youth. The narrative begins with Barker's cross-country journey at age twelve, working his passage via schooner on the Great Lakes and canal mule-driving. At sixteen in 1869, he shipped aboard the Alcyone, a ninety-two-ton whaler bound for the Indian Ocean with twenty-three crew. The volume details shipboard hardships including severe punishment—boys hung by thumbs or lashed with rope's ends—and poor provisions of hardtack and salt meat punctuated by flying fish and turtle soup. The account covers whaling operations: sighting sperm whales, harpooning, and lance-killing. During a dramatic episode securing a whale's tether, Barker jumps into shark-infested waters between the whale and schooner. The narrative describes shark encounters, kangaroo hunts in Australia, indigenous encounters in Madagascar and Fiji, and later sections address Barker's Boston police career and musical study.