My story about the remarkable whaling man, Ebenezer Franklin Nye, has been published in the Autumn edition of Sea History, the quarterly journal of the National Maritime Historical Society. It took fifty years, but my collegiate focus on maritime history finally has paid off with publication.
I first came across Nye while researching my book about the Siberian whaling disaster of 1858, and once his name was filed away in the back of my mind, continued to come across him in other accounts. After visiting the Cataumet cemetery in the fall of 2025 to look for the headstones of two lost whalers who died in Russia, I stumbled on Nye’s marker and knew from the inscription–“who lost his life in the Arctic, winter of 1879-80″ that I had to learn more.
Hampton Sides’ 2014 account, In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, tells the story of arctic death and desolation in the frozen waters of the Chukchi Sea. Nye died there the same winter the Jeannette went missing.
Here’s a PDF of my article. I strongly recommend joining the National Maritime Historical Society. Sea History is a member benefit and one of the best print publications covering the subject.