Siren Song
He was the third generation in his family to follow the sea and young to captain his own ship. The Rebekah Lee was a three-masted barque made of two kinds of oak and two kinds of pine, eighty-seven feet long, and twenty-six feet wide. She wasn’t a large ship as whale-ships went, but she was as sturdy and reliable as her namesake.
When he left New Bedford on the maiden voyage of the Rebekah Lee, Nathaniel Goode had every expectation that he would return in three years with a hold full of whale oil and riches enough to build Rebekah a fine house in the best neighborhood in the city where they had both been born.
Rebekah had told him all she wanted was for him to return home safely, but he’d seen her wistful looks at the mansions whale wealth had built, had seen her lingering glances at the rich clothes the captains’ ladies wore.
Nathanial sailed for South America, leaving behind a father who was proud of him and a woman who loved him and a land-lubber business partner who envied him.
He sailed with a crew of whale-men recruited up and down New England’s coast, plucking them from harbors and taverns and seaman’s halls. He knew most of them, or their families, even the Portuguese who’d come down from the Azores, looking for a berth. They were good men and well-seasoned, and Nathaniel was pleased to see how smoothly they worked together.
