One of the central problems with what we can call existence is that it is populated with people who quite frequently can be extremely irritating. This is not an original insight, and I don’t expect anyone to be surprised by it. The story of how we deal with difficult and bothersome people is as old as Cain and Abel, and it isn’t going to change anytime soon.

The conflict between ordinary dull people who would just as soon be left alone and those who seek to annoy them lies at the heart of many a tale, but it seems to show up in maritime history and fiction more often than not. This, of course, is a result of the close confinement and enforced conviviality of life at sea, which makes it much harder to avoid contact with unpleasant people, because there’s no other place to go. And one doesn’t have to be a Bligh or a Queeg to cause conflict; even petty differences and grievances can catch fire on a long and otherwise monotonous ocean voyage.

"When LEFT FOR DEAD is able to put out its full set of sails, it is a deeply engrossing tale with a delightfully twisty plot.... Anyone who read David Grann’s THE WAGER with profit will relish this sprawling sea story."

LEFT FOR DEAD is the story of an expedition that took place during the first days of the War of 1812. An American-flagged brig sailed out of New York and headed for the remote Falkland Islands. Its purpose was to --- and there’s no real way to disguise this for the modern reader --- kill an enormous number of poor innocent baby seals. (Eric Jay Dolin, the intrepid author, largely eschews details about the technicalities of sailing, but there is a whole lot in the book about how seal skins are harvested, prepared and sold.) The Falklands at this time being well-found in baby seals, and there being a robust market for seal skins in China, it bid fair to be a profitable voyage.

The leader of this expedition, a seasoned mariner named Charles H. Barnard, was facing two issues that looked like opportunities but were not. First of all, the Falklands were just about played out in terms of sealing, and the market in China was on a downturn. Secondly, the War of 1812 was starting, in part because of the Royal Navy’s pernicious habit of impressing sailors on American ships. There was a glut of experienced sailors available for hire, so Barnard decided to take advantage of this by bringing along his father --- an experienced seafarer and the nominal captain of the brig --- as well as three other men who had captained their own ships. This meant that there were five captains on a very small ship during an extremely long and stormy voyage.

Perhaps nothing would have come of it. Maybe the five men could have pulled together and focused on the long-term commercial gains involved in putting a large number of baby seals to death. However, Barnard’s ship would cross paths with a stricken British ship, plying its way from Australia to London, that ran aground on the treacherous rocks of the Falklands. This led to a rescue mission and the arrival of yet another captain --- a junior Royal Navy officer intent on making the American ship a prize of war.

The book is called LEFT FOR DEAD, so it is not that much of a spoiler to indicate that this unlikely chain of events includes the intentional marooning of Barnard, who had spent a not-inconsiderable part of the voyage quarreling with his comrades. Unfortunately, Dolin is dependent to some degree on Barnard’s account, so we largely get his side of the story. It’s a story that results in his being left alone to starve on a remote, cold, stormy archipelago, so it could not have put him in a very good light.

When LEFT FOR DEAD is able to put out its full set of sails, it is a deeply engrossing tale with a delightfully twisty plot. But as the results of all the various treacherous plans are revealed, it condenses to a somewhat pedestrian wilderness survival story. (The hero of said story is Barnard’s dog, Cent, whose valor and tenacity are of the highest quality throughout, and who deserves a much better ending than he gets.) Anyone who read David Grann’s THE WAGER with profit will relish this sprawling sea story.