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CORVALLIS - Nearly a century ago, young museum curator Robert Cushman Murphy staked his life, his marriage, and his career on a crew of barefoot illiterates aboard a battered Yankee whaling ship bound for the rim of the Antarctic. Murphy was in search of bird species not found in the northern hemisphere. In 1912, most of the world had never seen a penguin. Not even stuffed.

t took a year to go out and back. Murphy measured and catalogued anything that flew, swam, or breathed along the way. Some he preserved in bottles of alcohol. He also preserved the details of a dying industry by documenting the whale hunts, the hardships, and the day-to-day details of life at sea aboard a square-rigger.

Working from letters, clippings, family histories, and Murphy's book, "Logbook for Grace," author Eleanor Mathews has re-told her grandfather's story in her own book, "Ambassador to the Penguins." She will talk about the books in a free public lecture at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport on Saturday, April 17, 1:30 p.m. A book signing will follow at the center's bookstore.

"He was a charming man," said Matthews of her grandfather. "He had a warmth to him, a - I don't often use the word - 'twinkle.' He was a very popular lecturer and a fabulous writer."

Murphy became an expert on sea birds and won the prestigious John Burroughs Award - later won by such writers as Rachel Carson and Barry Lopez - for his book on the oceanic birds. His "Logbook for Grace," first published in the 1940s, stayed in print through the 1960s.

But the book had been out of print for many years, and had slipped out of Matthew's attention as well, when she rediscovered Murphy's original 1912 manuscript of the voyage among old family papers.

"People would tell me they had read my grandfather's book, and how much they enjoyed it," said Matthews. "It seemed to me that it was a story worth keeping alive."

In its review of "Ambassador," Publishers Weekly wrote this "handsome book is a fitting tribute to a man who went on to become one of this country's most distinguished naturalists and environmentalists."

Matthews, who lives in Port Townsend, Wash., has had a varied career as a cartographer, a graphic designer, and a manager of graphic software development. More recently she has focused on fiction and creative nonfiction, for which she has received various honors and awards.

"Ambassador to the Penguins," was published in November 2003 by David R. Godine Publishers.