C. A. M. (Charles Austin Mendell) Taber

Born in 1824 and remembered as an American whaling captain, author, and poet, he went to sea young and spent much of his early life on whaling voyages. Sources on his life agree that he shipped out as a teenager, and later became master of his own vessel, the Millinocket.

His writing seems to have grown directly out of that experience. Rhymes from a Sailor's Journal brought together poems shaped by life aboard ship and between voyages, while later works ranged far beyond memoir and verse into big-picture questions about winds, ocean currents, and ice ages. That mix of practical seafaring knowledge and wide-ranging speculation gives his books a distinctive voice.

Reliable details about his life are limited, but he is consistently linked with coastal Massachusetts, especially the New Bedford and Acushnet area, and he died in 1911. No clearly verifiable portrait image was found from the pages reviewed, so no profile image is included here.