THIERCELIN, Louis - Lot 154

THIERCELIN, Louis Diary of a whaler. Travels in Oceania. Paris, L. Hachette, 1866. 2 volumes in-12 (175 x 111 mm) of 2 ff.n.ch., 352 pp. for volume I ; 2 ff.n.ch., 376 pp. for volume II. Red half-chagrin, spine ribbed, yellow cover (without spine) preserved (modern binding). Forbes, 2730; Hill, 1690; Ferguson, 16990; O'Reilly, Tahiti, 1246. First edition. A rare and wide-ranging whaling account, particularly interesting for its accounts of Hawaii and French interests in New Zealand. Louis Thiercelin served as physician on two voyages to the South Seas, one between 1837 and 1841 and the next more than twenty years later, from 1863 to 1865. The time lapse between Thiercelin's expeditions allowed him to make interesting observations about how places like Akarao changed from one visit to the next. Similarly, he devotes two chapters to the Hawaiian Islands, one from 1839 and the other from 1864. Other islands and places covered in the narrative include Madeira, Liberia, Tahiti, Tasmania, the Chatham Islands, the St. Paul Islands, New Amsterdam, the coral islands of Chesterfield and Bampton, New Caledonia, etc. Thiercelin's account offers new details about the whaling ships and their crews, including detailed descriptions of the different types of whales, details about the actual whaling hunts, and explanations of some of the latest and most deadly whaling techniques, such as poisoned harpoons and explosively charged harpoons propelled by gun-like mechanisms. In addition to the important information on whaling, the book is important for Thiercelin's observations on the colonial activities of the English and Spanish crowns, including the mistreatment of the Bubi people in present-day Equatorial Guinea and the Maoris in New Zealand.