Mutiny on the Globe: The Fatal Voyage of Samuel Comstock

Thomas Heffernan's Mutiny on the Globe is the tale of 19th-century psychopathy on the high seas. In 1824, to satisfy a long-held dream of creating a desert island kingdom, Samuel Comstock, of Nantucket and New York City, led a ghastly mutiny aboard a whaler in the South Seas. Within days, Comstock, who had begun establishing his monarchy in the Marshall Islands, was murdered by his fellow mutineers. Some of the remaining seamen returned to America; others were butchered by Marshallese, and two were held in benign captivity by the natives for 21 months. Heffernan's account of the mutiny is oddly brief. The bulk of his narrative traces Comstock's inexplicably bizarre pre-mutiny life and the post-mutiny existence of the two marooned sailors. Though the self-consciously artful prose too often interferes with the primary narrative--as do the many tangential historical asides--the book does contain some haunting and macabre moments. --H. O'Billovich