Redmer Yska: An Errand of Mercy

By MARGIE THOMSON

So shocked are we these days at the slaughtering of whales, sea lions, seals and penguins by early oil harvesters that we can overlook the misery experienced by those employed to do that dirty work.

Yska's book has these sorry men painted into the backdrop for his story of greed and feuding at the end of the 19th century in the southern reaches of New Zealand and in the islands of the heaving, freezing subantarctic seas.

This is a family history, which skirts around itself in a fairly successful attempt to become something of more general interest: the story of stubborn Captain Jacob Eckhoff (Yska's great-grandfather) who, in the employ of infamous Invercargill businessman and MP Joseph Hatch, dropped a crew of penguin hunters on remote Macquarie Island. Hatch dragged his feet over collecting the crew, until Eckhoff made a heroic attempt to save them.

Yska is a skilled researcher and writer, and easily brings to life this sordid period of the past.

Banshee Books

$29.95