The Wreck of the Mentor

About this book

New York Times • “The Nonfiction Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026” Goodreads • Readers’ Most Anticipated Books of Summer…and the Rest of the Year! Kirkus • 40 Hottest Reads for Summer of 2026 An astonishing true story—one of the most gripping maritime sagas of the nineteenth century—told by our era’s “expert literary steersman” (Washington Post). From the best–selling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters comes the story of the American whaleship Mentor, wrecked in 1832 on a remote reef in the western Pacific. With supplies dwindling, the eleven surviving crewmen face not only the miseries of shipwreck in unfamiliar territory but also the profound uncertainty of contact with the Indigenous people of the Micronesian archipelago of Palau, who within days approach the deserted men brandishing axes, clubs, and spears. In this gripping saga of cultural collision, tribal wars, and dashed hopes, award–winning historian Eric Jay Dolin vividly reconstructs the Mentor’s doomed voyage, the yea