In July 1831, the whaleship Mentor set off from New Bedford, Massachusetts, with 22 aboard. The sailors traveled the Atlantic to the Azores and down the coast of Africa, rounding the Cape of Good Hope. In March they crossed the Indian Ocean to Timor, Indonesia, and then headed toward whaling grounds in the western Pacific. In May, the captain set sail for Guam and never arrived.
Instead, in a heavy storm, the Mentor slammed into a reef in the Micronesian archipelago of Palau. The ship thudded three times, lost its rudder and heeled over.
Ten men quickly cast off in a whaleboat later found capsized and empty. When the captain and four sailors tried to lower in a second boat, a giant wave smashed it, with one man lost and others barely making it back on board.
After a long night, the surviving half of the crew reached a small cay near the island of Kayangel. In the morning, 20 natives in a canoe, carrying clubs and spears, approached.
Things were to get worse and then far worse. And you, the reader, wonder throughout: Could I survive — endure — this?
The sailors were buffeted not just among the seas but three nations, for years and on different islands, their fates influenced by prior castaways. The author pieces different histories together, while in his introduction acknowledging, “There is no getting around the reality that the main sources I relied on are penned by Westerners, the people who came to Palau, unintentionally or not … Although I have used Palauan sources and oral traditions where possible, they are relatively few in number.”
The castaways are at the mercy of the natives, but they are encroaching. The intrusions change a nation.
The book is dense, involving a cast of nearly 80 characters and five boats or ships (not even counting the ill-fated Syren, of 1823). Among the 22 sailors on the Mentor, known ages were 15 to 32. Six were teenagers.
In 1783, the Antelope, from England, had wrecked off the island of Koror, Palau. The Indigenous treated the crew warmly and helped them build a new ship from remnants, but coveted their weaponry. The sailors had to go to war against the residents’ enemies — hence the chief of Koror became dominant — and, in departing, to promise more firearms.
Nearly 50 years later, the crew of the Mentor landed on Ngarchelong, a region on the island of Babeldaob. The Ngarchelongese also wanted muskets, while the people of Koror wanted the castaways.
More peril at sea, enslavement, escapes, rescue missions and double dealings ensue.
The book, “The Wreck of the Mentor,” released in June, was an immediate New York Times bestseller. On Aug. 18, the author, Eric Jay Dolin, will speak with Mitzi Rapkin of Basalt for her podcast, “First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing” (firstdraftwriters.com), at The Arts Campus at Willits (TACAW) free with an RSVP (tacaw.org/calendar). Rapkin has done over 600 literary podcasts, though none with Dolin.
“This book sounded like a great combination of history, adventure and adversity,” she says via email, adding that she believes residents and visitors here “are attracted to stories of survival and cultural clashes” from an expert.
Dolin, author of 17 books, has a bachelor’s degree in biology and environmental studies from Brown University, a master’s in environmental management at Yale and a PhD in environmental policy from MIT, and has worked for the Environmental Protection Agency and National Marine Fisheries Service. He lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sun: At the end of the book, you say that the manuscript of Captain Barnard’s memoir, a key source, was accidentally discovered in 1979 in the Kendall Whaling Museum (now New Bedford Whaling Museum), where it had been misfiled. The museum published it. How did it all happen?
Dolin: The guy who transcribed the [handwritten] manuscript was Kenneth R. Martin [museum director]. He edited it and wrote an introduction. It’s “Naked and a prisoner: Captain Edward C. Barnard’s narrative of shipwreck in Palau, 1832-1833.”
The way I found it was rather simple. Once I had decided I was interested in Edward Barnard and the Mentor, I just started doing searches on the internet … This little volume popped up, and I was able to find a used copy online.
Sun: It seemed such chance.
Dolin: No, because that wasn’t the first book I found. That first book was Horace Holden’s [“A narrative of the shipwreck, captivity and sufferings of Horace Holden and Benj. H. Nute”], published in 1836 … I don’t have a physical copy of that. It’s probably a rare book and hard to find. Google Books helped me a lot … I downloaded the whole PDF.
After I read that, I said, okay, there’s gotta be other stuff written. I looked at newspaper and journal articles and quickly came upon this narrative by Edward Barnard.
Then a guy on the [USS] Vincennes, the naval rescue mission sent by President Andrew Jackson, wrote a four-part series in a naval journal.
In terms of original sources from the Palauans, there was nothing, because they don’t have a written history, at least back then, other than oral history. I used a couple of oral histories, but the thing that was more helpful was two or three books written by Palauans or the Palauan government that detailed their own country’s history. All those books had sections on this event and early Western explorers.
There’s a three-volume book put together by a Palauan agency, and luckily I was able to get all three volumes from the Harvard Widener Library and scan them.
Sun: Did you feel you could’ve survived what these crewmen did?
Dolin: I’d like to think that I could … I’m pretty tough. I’m very determined, but I guarantee that initially I would be incredibly depressed … But snap out of that and do everything I could.
I don’t know if I could hold out for four years, crawling around an island and eating insects and leaves and whatever entrails were given to me. I literally don’t know.
Any talk of a film option?
[Laughs] I’m not averse to it. Nobody’s reached out yet. Getting a film made is very difficult. I’d love it to happen but I’m not expecting it.
I’m ready and willing. I do know books that were optioned 30 years after they came out.
Well, “The Odyssey” just came out from something written over 2,000 years ago.
I would prefer that it happen while I’m alive. But I guess there’s always hope.
In a Nutshell
What: “First Draft” interview with author Eric Jay Dolin
Where: TACAW
When: Aug. 18 at 6:30pm
Free RSVP: tacaw.org
