This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor.

This is CBS, I on the World. I'm John Batchelor. Let's go sealing. A new book, Left for Dead,

shipwreck, treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World.

This is not only sealing a very, very lucrative occasion about the time of the revolution into the early 19th century.

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

Argentina and the United Kingdom. They remain part of the British Empire, British Commonwealth.

However, the conversation here takes us to another collision between the Young America and Mother

Britain. This would be the war of 1812.

Eric J. Dolan is the author.

I congratulate him.

The research is not only impressive, it's extremely persuasive,

that we're living the life of a sealer in 1812.

We begin, though, with the commerce.

What was it about seals or something near to something called a sea otter?

Who wanted such things in great quantity that you could launch an expedition to seal for one or two years?

Eric, congratulations.

Good evening.

What was the commerce of sealing?

Who bought?

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.

And one of the original ways that Americans got involved in the fur trade internationally was through the Seater trade in the Pacific Northwest.

When Captain Cook on one of his voyages went to the Pacific Northwest, some of his men later in Canton sold sea otter pelt for $100 a piece. And this got everybody's attention.

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