author

Cyrus M. Hussey

Best remembered as a young Nantucket sailor who survived the 1824 Globe mutiny, he helped turn an extraordinary ordeal into one of the most vivid seafaring narratives of the early American Pacific. His book blends shipboard violence, survival, and close observation of island life into a firsthand account that still feels gripping.

1 Audiobook

A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 And the journal of a residence of two years on the Mulgrave Islands; with observations on the manners and customs of the inhabitants

A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 And the journal of a residence of two years on the Mulgrave Islands; with observations on the manners and customs of the inhabitants

by William Lay, Cyrus M. Hussey

About the author

Cyrus M. Hussey was a Nantucket mariner and co-author of A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824, first published in 1828. The book presents him and William Lay as the surviving authors of a dramatic real-life account centered on the whaleship Globe and their years in the Pacific.

The title page identifies him as being "of Nantucket" and describes Lay and Hussey as the only survivors from the massacre of the ship's company by islanders after the 1824 mutiny. The story that made his name grew out of the Globe mutiny, a notorious episode in whaling history in which crew members killed their officers before the ship reached the Marshall Islands.

Reliable biographical detail about Hussey beyond this episode is limited in the sources I could confirm here. A genealogy source suggests he was born in 1805 and died at sea in 1829, but because that information was not corroborated by stronger biographical references in the material I found, it is best treated cautiously. What is clear is that his place in literary history rests on a rare survivor's narrative that combines adventure, danger, and firsthand observation.