28: The High-Risk Sealing Expedition of the Nanina Eric J. Dolan Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World Sealing was a lucrative industry, particularly for the China market, valued for its high-quality fur seal pelts and el
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John Batchelor
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🗓️ 26 October 2025
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Summary
Eric J. Dolan
Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World
Sealing was a lucrative industry, particularly for the China market, valued for its high-quality fur seal pelts and elephant seal blubber. Charles Barnard, a veteran sealer, proposed a high-risk expedition on the brig Nanina to the Falkland Islands, which Murray and Son backed despite the impending War of 1812. Many merchant vessels remained in port, but Barnard and Murray viewed this as an opportunity to meet pent-up demand. Barnard's crew included four captains, notably diarist Barzillai Pease, and his 63-year-old, infirm father, Valentine Barnard, who was meant to captain the Nanina on its return voyage to New York laden with cargo. They departed from New York just as an embargo took effect.
1833 FALKLANDS
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor. |
| 0:10.0 | This is CBS, I on the World. I'm John Batchelor. Let's go sealing. A new book, Left for Dead, |
| 0:19.0 | shipwreck, treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World. |
| 0:23.3 | This is not only sealing a very, very lucrative occasion about the time of the revolution into the early 19th century. |
| 0:31.4 | It's also a story about the Falkland Islands that once we're at the edge of the world and are now in the conversation all the time between |
| 0:38.3 | Argentina and the United Kingdom. They remain part of the British Empire, British Commonwealth. |
| 0:45.1 | However, the conversation here takes us to another collision between the Young America and Mother |
| 0:53.0 | Britain. This would be the war of 1812. |
| 0:55.9 | Eric J. Dolan is the author. |
| 0:57.4 | I congratulate him. |
| 0:58.5 | The research is not only impressive, |
| 1:01.4 | it's extremely persuasive |
| 1:03.0 | that we're living the life of a sealer in 1812. |
| 1:07.6 | We begin, though, with the commerce. |
| 1:09.6 | What was it about seals or something near to something called a sea otter? |
| 1:15.1 | Who wanted such things in great quantity that you could launch an expedition to seal for one or two years? |
| 1:23.0 | Eric, congratulations. |
| 1:24.3 | Good evening. |
| 1:25.1 | What was the commerce of sealing? |
| 1:26.8 | Who bought? |
| 1:44.8 | Who sold? Good evening to you. Good evening to you. Thanks for having me on. Well, sealing as an industry, the way that I first found out about it was a book I wrote years ago called Leviathan about the history of whaling in America. And then also a book I wrote called Fur Fortune and Empire about the history of the fur trade in America. |
| 1:52.4 | And one of the original ways that Americans got involved in the fur trade internationally was through the Seater trade in the Pacific Northwest. |
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