In the Track of the Trades / The Account of a Fourteen Thousand Mile Yachting Cruise to the Hawaiis, Marquesas, Societies, Samoas and Fijis

The author recounts a fourteen-thousand-mile yachting voyage across the central and south Pacific, narrating passages between California, the Hawaiian Islands, the Marquesas, Tahiti and other Society Islands, Samoa and Fiji. He blends practical seamanship and vivid sea passages with onshore vignettes of island landscapes, ceremonies, dances and local entertainments, including a Passion Play, kava rituals and sporting contests. The narrative includes hunting and fishing episodes, encounters with sharks, and descriptions of native houses, tattooing and war canoes, punctuated by photographs and sketches that document ports of call, shipboard life and the social interplay between visiting yachtsmen and island communities.