Whaling Captains of Color: America's First Meritocracy
Skip Finley
Naval Institute Press
The stories of leaders of color in an era when the only other option was slavery. Whaling was one of the first American industries to exhibit diversity — where a man became a captain not because he was white, but because he knew how to kill a whale. In this remarkable volume, Finley creates a portrait of what life was like for these sailors of color on the high seas.