author
William Hussey Macy
1826–1891
A Nantucket sea captain turned storyteller, he wrote vivid whaling tales drawn from firsthand experience at sea. His best-known book, There She Blows!, helped preserve the language, routines, and danger of 19th-century whaling life for later readers.
1 Audiobook
There She Blows! Or, The Log of the Arethusa
by William Hussey Macy
About the author
Born in 1826 and dying in 1891, William Hussey Macy was a Nantucket writer remembered for sea stories rooted in the whaling world. Records connected with his life and family place him firmly in Nantucket, and bibliographic sources identify him as the author of There She Blows!; or, The Log of the Arethusa.
Macy seems to have written from experience as well as imagination. His work is closely associated with American whaling, and surviving publications and archival references show that he wrote short fiction and maritime pieces in addition to his best-known book. That background gives his storytelling a practical, lived-in feel rather than a purely romantic one.
Today he is mainly of interest to readers curious about maritime history, Nantucket, and 19th-century American adventure writing. Even when the plots are dramatic, his pages offer a useful glimpse of the culture, work, and vocabulary of the whale fishery.