The Sea Lions: The Lost Sealers

For a laconic but spot-on description of James Fenimore Cooper's late sea adventure novel THE SEA LIONS, I cannot improve on that given on the Cooper Society Website. It reads: "1849 The Sea Lions; or, The Lost Sealers. 1819-20: Long Island and Antarctica; polar adventure and religious regeneration." *** The novel begins in September 1819 in a coastal whaling town at the eastern end of Long Island, New York. Its story climaxes there in April 1821, although the briefly sketched lives of hero, heroine and a simple Godly sailor man remain intertwined for nearly another three decades. *** Weeks earlier, an ailing old whaler named Thomas Daggett had been dropped off by a sailing ship. Tom remains in very ill health and relies on local paid-for charity for lodging and for whatever other care he might get. His plan is to be transported 100 miles east, to die among kinfolk in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. *** Ichabod Pratt, prosperous lay deacon of a New England Puritan sect powerful in those parts, manages to pry from the dying Tom Daggett secret information about a fabulous seal-rich island near the Antarctic Circle south of Cape Horn. Pratt also learns latitude and longitude of pirate treasure buried on a key in the West Indies. The Deacon's besetting, soul-destroying sin of covetousness drives the plot. He causes a small vessel to be built to go in search of both whale oil, seals and buried treasure. Pratt names as master of his vessel, the "Sea Lion," an impressive neighbor, 29 year old Roswell Gardiner. The Deacon's long orphaned 19-year old niece Mary has turned down 20 proposals of marriage by 26-year old Roswell on religious grounds. For Mary believes that Jesus is God and Roswell does not. On all other points of Christian theology they are one. *** After old Tom Daggett dies, a nephew from Martha's Vineyard, Captain Jason Daggett, who has heard rumors of Tom's treasures, collects old Tom's charts (partly but clandestinely obliterated by the Deacon), from a battered sea chest in the care of Deacon Pratt. gathers a crew of his own and shadows young Gardiner in a twin ship also called "Sea Lion" down into Antarctic waters. Both ships become avoidably trapped in the ice and their crews of around 30 men spend the winter of 1820-21 trying with far from complete success to stay warm and alive. *** Despite privations, Captain Roswell Gardiner keeps Sabbath, reads the Bible Mary gave him (with key underlined passages) and debates God's Providence and the Incarnation of the Son of God with simple boatsman Stephen SImpson. Roswell's abiding difficulty is: "believing in a Deity he could not comprehend; meaning merely that his reason must be satisfied in a doctrine like that of the Incarnation" (Ch. 25). Some of the sealers return to Long Island in 1821 just in time for Roswell Gardiner to reach the deathbed of Deacon Pratt as his greedy relatives gather to see if he has left a will. *** I pray that this sketch is enough to help you decide if you want to read THE SEA LIONS. I hope that you do. The descriptions of life of sealers trapped near the Antarctic Circle are enough to make me thankful for my warm home. Theology (an intricate Christian apology for belief in Jesus as the atoning Son of God and in God's Providence) is extensively discussed and is integral to the plot. -OOO-