I have read a lot of books on nautical history over the past 20 years, and one thing I can always count on -- if it's written by Eric Jay Dolin, it's going to be good.

So of course I was delighted when a review copy of The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair & Deliverance in the Age of Sail arrived in the mail from his publisher. Dolin's latest tale focuses on an American whaleship that wrecked on a remote reef in the western Pacific Ocean in 1832.

It begins, appropriately enough, with the titular wreck. The ship slams into the reef "with savage force" during a storm on page 2.

Although no one dies in the violent crash, nearly half the crew (including the first mate, Thomas Colesworthy) makes an attempt to get away in a ship's boat ... which is later seen drifting in the water with no one onboard. A few more men die in an attempt to launch a second boat. Finally, Captain Edward C. Barnard and the 10 remaining men manage to safely board the last remaining boat and make it to a small sandy cay about 3 miles from the wreck. Using a sextant, the captain -- who, coincidentally enough, was a distant cousin of Captain Charles H. Barnard, who was featured in Dolin's previous book, Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, & Survival at the Edge of the World -- determines they are in the region of Palau, an archipelago of some 300 islands to the north of Indonesia and southeast of the Philippines.

Once the seamen make it ashore and find their first meager meal of seafood there -- and after a large canoe bearing 20 heavily armed natives arrives the next morning -- Dolin takes us back to the origins of whale hunting for some historical context.

What follows is a thorough -- and thoroughly enjoyable -- recounting of the fates of the captain and crew of the Mentor, along with several asides about the native populations of those islands and their customs, as well as other shipwrecks and encounters with the inhabitants in that region of the Pacific. The author packs a lot of information into this book, which is a fairly fast read at just over 200 pages, but it never reads like a dry history text. Dolin has a gift for transforming the nuts and bolts of our nautical past into thrilling adventure, and he doesn't disappoint here.

Before all is said and done, readers will have learned a lot about whaling, the cultures of several Pacific island communities, and the interactions of various European and American ships that had previously visited those islands, whether by choice or misfortune. Some encounters were peaceful, even mutually beneficial, while others turned violent and in some cases deadly.

Some of the men on the Mentor escaped their marooning relatively quickly, while others were left behind in circumstances that at best could be described as slavery, at worst outright torture. Interactions between the people of some local villages were less than cordial, at times resulting in battles between them, and the impact of British and American sailors -- especially the materials and weapons they sometimes gifted their benefactors -- cannot be understated.

Dolin concludes the book by describing the futures of the men who survived the experience, as well as the future of the Palau region right up through modern times. (It was of particular importance in the Pacific theater of World War II.) It's unlikely you'll finish The Wreck of the Mentor with very many questions ... except possibly, "When does Dolin's next book come out?" Few historians bring their stories to life so deftly, and anyone captivated by tales of the sea should definitely check him out.

[ visit Eric Jay Dolin's website ]