Black Hands, White Sails

by Patricia C. McKissack and Fredrick McKissack

Book Overview

During colonial times, the whaling industry developed along the eastern coast. Nantucket and New Bedford, Massachusetts, were the centers where ships were built and outfitted, and where they returned laden with their precious cargo. These whaling ships supplied 80% of the oil used by Americans for well over a century.Because whaling was so dangerous, captains and crews of the whaling boats set themselves apart from ordinary seamen. Despite the challenges...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0590483137
• ISBN13: 9780590483131
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Scholastic Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 8 to 13 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 8

Customer Reviews

New Bedford's untold history

This book is indeed a must read and should be made a prerequisite for all that read Moby Dick. I found this book to be a riveting account of whaling and the importance that people of color visited upon this industry. I was very much overcome with emotions with every turn of the page as I learned how many of my ancestors came to live in New Bedford, MA and what they must have endured.

Must Read for black historians and Whale buffs.

This book is a must read for black historians, civil war historians, and whale experts, which I am. I was completely unaware of the presence and dynamics of the life of black whalers. The serious risks of whaling far outweighed the risks of abduction by slave patrollers or even a life burdened by segregation and discrimination. I was particularily interested in the use and abuse of whale ships in the Civil war. A stone fleet of 15 whaling ships from the North were loaded with stones and sunk in Charleston harbor in an attempt to block the harbor in 1861. The attempt failed because the waters were too deep. Sountherners then became hell bent on destroying whale boats. The Confederate steamer Alabama sunk over 70 whale boats during the war. The Shenandoah sunk 34 more after the war. Black heroes and self made men are hailed, as well as those who were cannibalized by hungry crew in desparate times. I couldn't put this book down.