The Volunteer, a nineteenth-century Yorkshire whaling ship, becomes the stage for a confrontation between brutal harpooner Henry Drax and ex-army surgeon Patrick Sumner, the ship's medic, during a violent, ill-fated voyage to the Arctic.

After a tragic accident maims her laboratory assistant, Dr. Sara Pollard's career as a primate behaviorist lies in ruins. With nothing left to lose, Pollard, descendant of a Nantucket captain whose ship was sunk by a rogue whale, accepts an offer to join anti-whaling activists on a round-the-world racing yacht as the resident scientist, to sail from Argentina to the stormy Antarctic Sea. There they'll shadow, harass, and expose the Japanese fleet,...

In 1616, the crew of an English whaling ship prepares to sail home, except for Thomas Cave, who has accepted a wager from his shipmates--to endure a winter alone on an Arctic island--and prepares for months of solitude and harsh weather.

Hoping to escape the horrors of his past, disgraced ex-army surgeon Patrick Sumner signs up as the ship's doctor on an ill-fated Arctic whaling expedition. Soon he's confronted by a new horror, the brutish killer Henry Drax. When Sumner and his crewmates are left stranded on the merciless Arctic wasteland, he discovers just how far he's prepared to go against the savagery of nature and man.