In hawser-taut prose recalling the works of Melville, Conrad, and Poe, Miles Hordern recounts his voyage on a twenty-eight-foot boat from New Zealand to South America, the largest uninterrupted stretch of water on earth, and the dominion of icebergs, cyclones, and monumental swells. Taking into account those who have gone before him--writers, adventurers, fictional characters, cartographers, and doomed voyages, from the S.S. Whaleship Essex to the...