The Golden Harpoon

# The Golden Harpoon; or, Lost Among the Floes

This serialized whaling story by Roger Starbuck (Beadle and Adams, 1865) opens aboard the New London whaleship Montpelier anchored off Kamschatka. Captain Howard has brought his seventeen-year-old niece Alice to sea; she wears a golden harpoon pendant his gift. The mate Briggs warns repeatedly of danger from a nearby ice floe despite the captain's dismissal. When whales are spotted on the ice, the captain orders boats away. Before departure, Alice encounters Jack Stump, an oddly-featured sailor with elaborate patched clothing and a pigtail, who warns her of mutinous plotting among several crew members—New Zealanders and a Portuguese steward—left aboard during the hunt. The narrative emphasizes emerging tension between the captain's confidence and the mate's prescience, with Alice caught between her affection for sailor Harry Marline and growing unease about shipboard threats.