The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail

From the best-selling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters comes the story of the American whaleship Mentor, wrecked in 1832 on a remote reef in the western Pacific. With supplies dwindling, the twenty-two crewmen face not only the miseries of shipwreck in unfamiliar territory but also the profound uncertainty of first contact with the Indigenous people of the Micronesian archipelago of Palau, who within days approach the deserted men brandishing axes, clubs and spears. In this gripping saga of cultural collision, award-winning historian Eric Jay Dolin vividly reconstructs the Mentor’s doomed voyage, the months of perilous captivity and the negotiations that followed. Illustrated by more than 100 images and maps, The Wreck of the Mentor is at once a powerful story of survival and a revealing window into the great Age of Sail—a time when maritime ambition collided with local sovereignty, and when the outcome of one voyage rippled across oceans and empires. Eric Jay Dolin’s Left For Dead was praised as: “The author of several previous books on such maritime topics as piracy and whaling, Dolin is an expert literary steersman.” —Dennis Drabelle, The Washington Post “Dolin’s firm grasp of the 19th-century maritime world is undeniable….This is a masterly account of a historical event.” —Bill Heavey, The Wall Street Journal