Quiz

1. My method derives from the work of historian Melissa Villus, whose excellent study of 19th century whaling was a foundational text in the field of critical oceanic studies. In particular, her analysis of journals kept by 19th century whalemen offers an important model for my study of deep-sea submariners in the early 20th century. Like Villus, I will track responses to food and sleep deprivation contained in these men’s journals in order to achieve a better understanding of how these states affected their lived experience.

2. Historian Melissa Villus's study of 19th century whaling crucially considers the lived experiences of sailors on whaling ships in this period, yet she dismisses the role that race played in sailors' daily interactions. While my work undoubtedly builds on Villus' study, I would like to challenge her neglect of race in this story in order to understand how racial difference shaped labor conditions on American whaling ships.

3. In her study of 19th century whaling, Melissa Villus claims that early environmental studies of sperm whale populations dramatically overestimated the global sperm whale population. Unfortunately, the data she uses to support this argument is based on survey techniques that were proven to be inadequate by the US Board of Fisheries in 1922. Given this, Villus' claims about overfishing lack factual grounding, which calls into question the validity of this text’s status at the center of the field of critical oceanic studies.

4. Using Melissa Villus's data on mid-19th century whaling deaths and injuries, I show that public concern over workplace injuries was already an important issue well before the development of government regulation of labor conditions. Furthermore, I adopt Villus' central claim, that the lives of whalemen were as precarious as those of the whales they hunted, as a central foundation of my project.