The Whalers

For centuries, whaling ships roamed the oceans hunting for great cetaceans, the tip of the harpoon in a killing industry that had become essential to a rapidly modernizing world. The work was arduous, dangerous, often exploitative - and largely performed by intrepid (free) Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous men, working shoulder to shoulder with white peers from politically oppressed and impoverished lands. Reclaiming their stories, dignity, and independence, and tracking their ancestry and cultural heritage in whaling ports across three oceans, The Whalers puts this powerful narrative back in our collective consciousness and shines a light on a little known multiracial, and multicultural floating society that thrived despite the existence of the slave trade.