"Whitecar in Four Years Aboard the Whaleship...came across some old vessels of the New Zealand coast...noteworthy from the distinction and rank of their former owners." -The Philadelphia Times, Aug. 19, 1894
"Whitecar...author of...Four Years Aboard a Whaleship...says the slave trade is very active under the British in the Mauritius." -Semi-Weekly Mississippian, Nov. 30, 1859
"In his memoir, Four Years Aboard the Whaleship (1860), common sailor William Whitecar...laments the fact...citizens of New Bedford allow these 'harpies' to 'filch' from the brave whalemen who work in the city's famous and prosperous whale fishery." - Mapping Region in Early American Writing (2015)
"At times a sailor author tried to reassure his readers that there was nothing to fear from mariners. William Whitecar Jr. was one such writer." - Jack Tar's Story: The Autobiographies and Memoirs of Sailors in Antebellum America (2010)
"William Whitecar...derives his narrative from his log book...seamen's narratives...occupy a special and anomalous place in literary history." - The View from the Masthead, Maritime Imagination and Antebellum American Sea Narratives (2012)

Offering a vivid picture of life at sea, as well as observations on locations on land that the ship passed or stopped at, including the Azores, Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand, and numerous islands in the Pacific, William B. Whitecar's 1864 book "Four Years Aboard the Whaleship" is a first-hand account of a voyage to the Antarctic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans in search of the sperm and right whales.

William B. Whitecar, Jr., was a Philadelphian who signed on as a common sailor on the New Bedford whaler Barque Pacific. His book is based on a detailed journal, which he kept, as he explains in his preface, "at sea, on a sailor's chest, amongst seamen, by night and by day, amid storm and calm...."

The book offers a vivid picture of life at sea, as well as observations on locations on land that the ship passed or stopped at, including the Azores, Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand, and numerous islands in the Pacific.

Written just a few years after Herman Melville's literary classic of 1851, Moby-Dick: or The Whale, the book touches upon many of the same topics and themes that Melville covers in his great work of fiction: the long hours at sea, the diversity of the whaling crews and the international character of the whaling industry, "gammoning" with other whaleships at sea, the dangers of the hunt, and the death of fellow crewmen at sea.

About the author:
William B. Whitecar was born March 13, 1842, in Philadelphia and died February 17, 1897. He went on a whaleship as a young man and eventually became a Philadelphia manufacturer before his retirement.