The Williams family sailed the seas in the great days of American whaling. Eliza Azelia Williams set out from New Bedford in 1858, aboard her husband's vessel, the Florida, for a three-year voyage. She had two children born at sea, and the boy William grew up to go whaling in his turn, while the girl married Edgar Lewis, "the Whalebone King."

William was only twelve when the Williams' ship was abandoned with thirty-one others in the pack ice of the Arctic Ocean. He was fifteen when he became junior officer on the whaler Florence. In this book the adventures of the Williams' family are told first-hand from manuscripts handed down to Eliza Azelia's grandson, Harold Williams, the editor of this volume. We have Eliza's delightful diary of her three-year voyage, William's account of the wreck season of 1871 and of his first voyage as a junior officer aboard the Florence.