440: The Wreck of the Mentor w/ Eric Jay Dolin

Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

Erik Rivenes

History, True Crime, Education

4.7 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2026

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In May of 1832, an American whaleship called the Mentor went down on a remote reef in the western Pacific. Of the crew, eleven men made it out alive, but surviving the wreck was only the beginning. They found themselves stranded on unfamiliar shores, running low on supplies, and before long they were face to face with the Indigenous people of Palau, who approached them cautiously and heavily armed. My returning guest is best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin, and his new book is called The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail. In this conversation he walks us through the shipwreck, the crew's captivity, the clash of cultures and much more. The author's website: https://www.ericjaydolin.com/ The author on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ericjayd/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The Welcome, everyone to another episode of the Most Notorious podcast. I'm Eric Rivenis. Let's just jump right into the interview today. Well, it is so great to have Eric J. Dolan back on the show. He has been a regular guest over the years. He's been on
0:39.1	four times, actually, dating back to our interview about Blackbeard, episode 128 in 2019.
0:47.2	This is our fifth interview together, and it's about his new book out on June 2nd called
0:52.3	The Wreck of the Mentor, A True Story of Death, Dispair,
0:56.1	and Deliverance in the Age of Sale. Welcome back. I feel like I should like have a five-timer
1:02.8	jacket or something for you to wear. That would be great, but thanks for inviting me back.
1:09.9	It's a pleasure to be here.
1:11.7	Well, this is great. I have to ask you right away, where did you first hear about the mentor?
1:18.1	When did you first learn about this story? I mean, I would imagine it was while working on another
1:22.7	one of your many projects. Yeah, you're exactly right. Back in 2007, a book of mine called Leviathan,
1:31.0	the history of whaling in America, came out. And while I was researching that book, I did come
1:36.6	across the story of the mentor, because the mentor is, of course, a new Bedford Whale ship
1:41.3	that left port in 1831. So I came across that story. However, it didn't make
1:48.0	it into the narrative in Leviathan, but it was in the back of my head. And then you fast forward to
1:53.9	24 when a book I wrote called Left for Dead came out, which is about five men who were intentionally marooned on the Falkland Islands during the war of 1812.
2:06.1	And it involves there is a shipwreck in the story.
2:08.4	And these men are there for nearly two years.
2:12.4	And so there were some parallels with the mentor in the sense that there was a shipwreck with the mentor.
2:18.1	Some of the men stayed on Palau for almost four years. So that brought the mentor back into my consciousness.
2:25.2	And after I finished Life for Dead, I was looking for another book topic. And I said, hey, the mentor.
2:31.5	Let me dive into that a little bit more and see if it's a topic worth pursuing,
	...

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