Volunteer crew hunts seals on the ice

The Volunteer’s sealing hunt is the first substantial test of the voyage’s commercial promise: the crew kills and processes seals across the ice, while Arthur Brownlee weighs each result against a declining whaling industry and the demands of competition. The work yields a valuable beginning, but its hazards become personal when Patrick Sumner, assigned to an improvised sixth boat, struggles across the floes and falls into the water. The hunt thus joins the expedition’s economic calculations to the bodily cost of producing a cargo.