Herman
Melville was the author of a story about what we'd now consider an illegal activity,
the commercial hunting of whales for oil and meat. Whaling is still
carried out by Japan, Iceland and Canada, among other nations, though
most nations voluntarily abstain in the interests of conserving these
magnificent animals - as per International
Whaling Commission guidelines.
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CHAPTER 24. The Advocate.
As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling; and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales.
In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If a stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society, it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were he presented to the company as a
harpooneer, say; and if in emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials S.W.F.
(Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed pre-eminently presuming and ridiculous.
Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honouring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honour. And as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting the charge in question to be true; what disordered slippery decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies' plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier's profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale's vast tail, fanning into eddies the air over his head. For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!
But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!
But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of scales; see what we whalemen are, and have been.
Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have admirals of their whaling fleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties upwards of L1,000,000? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of America now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world; sail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth, at the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all this, if there be not something puissant in whaling?
But this is not the half; look again.
I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life, point out one single peaceful influence, which within the last sixty years has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world, taken in one aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way and another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so continuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to catalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many years past the whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If American and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage harbors, let them fire salutes to the honour and glory of the whale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted between them and the savages. They may celebrate as they will the heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I say that scores of anonymous Captains have sailed out of
Nantucket, that were as great, and greater than your Cook and your Krusenstern. For in their succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines and muskets would not willingly have dared. All that is made such a flourish of in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the life-time commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers. Often, adventures which Vancouver dedicates three chapters to, these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the ship's common log. Ah, the world! Oh, the world!
Until the whale fishery rounded Cape
Horn, no commerce but colonial, scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between Europe and the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific coast. It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts.
That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was given to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first blunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned those shores as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched there. The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony. Moreover, in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the emigrants were several times saved from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters. The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do commercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive missionaries to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold.
But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no aesthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet every time.
The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you will say.
THE WHALE NO FAMOUS AUTHOR, AND WHALING NO FAMOUS CHRONICLER? Who wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who composed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!
True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no good blood in their veins.
NO GOOD BLOOD IN THEIR VEINS? They have something better than royal blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel; afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and harpooneers—all kith and kin to noble Benjamin—this day darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.
Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not respectable.
WHALING NOT RESPECTABLE? Whaling is imperial! By old English statutory law, the whale is declared "a royal fish."*
Oh, that's only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any grand imposing way.
THE WHALE NEVER FIGURED IN ANY GRAND IMPOSING WAY? In one of the mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the world's capital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian coast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession.*
*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.
Grant it, since you cite it; but, say what you will, there is no real dignity in whaling.
NO DIGNITY IN WHALING? The dignity of our calling the very heavens attest. Cetus is a constellation in the South! No more! Drive down your hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to
Queequeg! No more! I know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty
whales. I account that man more honourable than that great captain of antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.
And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
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BOOK
CHAPTERS
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
CHAPTER
2. The Carpet-Bag.
CHAPTER
3. The Spouter-Inn.
CHAPTER
4. The Counterpane.
CHAPTER
5. Breakfast.
CHAPTER
6. The Street.
CHAPTER
7. The Chapel.
CHAPTER
8. The Pulpit.
CHAPTER
9. The Sermon.
CHAPTER
10. A Bosom Friend.
CHAPTER
11. Nightgown.
CHAPTER
12. Biographical.
CHAPTER
13. Wheelbarrow.
CHAPTER
14. Nantucket.
CHAPTER
15. Chowder.
CHAPTER
16. The Ship.
CHAPTER
17. The Ramadan.
CHAPTER
18. His Mark.
CHAPTER
19. The Prophet.
CHAPTER
20. All Astir.
CHAPTER
21. Going Aboard.
CHAPTER
22. Merry Christmas.
CHAPTER
23. The Lee Shore.
CHAPTER
24. The Advocate.
CHAPTER
25. Postscript.
CHAPTER
26. Knights and Squires.
CHAPTER
27. Knights and Squires.
CHAPTER
28. Ahab, Captain.
CHAPTER
29. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.
CHAPTER
30. The Pipe.
CHAPTER
31. Queen Mab.
CHAPTER
32. Cetology.
CHAPTER
33. The Specksnyder.
CHAPTER
34. The Cabin-Table.
CHAPTER
35. The Mast-Head.
CHAPTER
36. The Quarter-Deck.
CHAPTER
37. Sunset.
CHAPTER
38. Dusk.
CHAPTER
39. First Night Watch.
CHAPTER
40. Midnight, Forecastle.
CHAPTER
41. Moby Dick.
CHAPTER
42. The Whiteness of The Whale.
CHAPTER
43. Hark!
CHAPTER
44. The Chart.
CHAPTER
45. The Affidavit.
CHAPTER
46. Surmises.
CHAPTER
47. The Mat-Maker.
CHAPTER
48. The First Lowering.
CHAPTER
49. The Hyena.
CHAPTER
50. Ahab's Boat and Crew. Fedallah.
CHAPTER
51. The Spirit-Spout.
CHAPTER
52. The Albatross.
CHAPTER
53. The Gam.
CHAPTER
54. The Town-Ho's Story.
CHAPTER
55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.
CHAPTER
56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True
CHAPTER
57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in
CHAPTER
58. Brit.
CHAPTER
59. Squid.
CHAPTER
60. The Line.
CHAPTER
61. Stubb Kills a Whale.
CHAPTER
62. The Dart.
CHAPTER
63. The Crotch.
CHAPTER
64. Stubb's Supper.
CHAPTER
65. The Whale as a Dish.
CHAPTER
66. The Shark Massacre.
CHAPTER
67. Cutting In
CHAPTER
69. The Funeral.
CHAPTER
70. The Sphynx.
CHAPTER
71. The Jeroboam's Story.
CHAPTER
72. The Monkey-Rope.
CHAPTER
73. Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk
CHAPTER
74. The Sperm Whale's Head—Contrasted View.
CHAPTER
75. The Right Whale's Head—Contrasted View.
CHAPTER
76. The Battering-Ram.
CHAPTER
77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun.
CHAPTER
78. Cistern and Buckets.
CHAPTER
79. The Prairie.
CHAPTER
80. The Nut.
CHAPTER
81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin.
CHAPTER
82. The Honour and Glory of Whaling.
CHAPTER
83. Jonah Historically Regarded.
CHAPTER
84. Pitchpoling.
CHAPTER
85. The Fountain.
CHAPTER
86. The Tail.
CHAPTER
87. The Grand Armada.
CHAPTER
88. Schools and Schoolmasters.
CHAPTER
89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.
CHAPTER
90. Heads or Tails.
CHAPTER
91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.
CHAPTER
92. Ambergris.
CHAPTER
93. The Castaway.
CHAPTER
94. A Squeeze of the Hand.
CHAPTER
95. The Cassock.
CHAPTER
96. The Try-Works.
CHAPTER
97. The Lamp.
CHAPTER
98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.
CHAPTER
99. The Doubloon.
CHAPTER
100. Leg and Arm.
CHAPTER
101. The Decanter.
CHAPTER
102. A Bower in the Arsacides.
CHAPTER
103. Measurement of The Whale's Skeleton.
CHAPTER
104. The Fossil Whale.
CHAPTER
105. Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish?—Will He Perish?
CHAPTER
106. Ahab's Leg.
CHAPTER
107. The Carpenter.
CHAPTER
108. Ahab and the Carpenter.
CHAPTER
109. Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.
CHAPTER
110. Queequeg in His Coffin.
CHAPTER
111. The Pacific.
CHAPTER
112. The Blacksmith.
CHAPTER
113. The Forge.
CHAPTER
114. The Gilder.
CHAPTER
115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.
CHAPTER
116. The Dying Whale.
CHAPTER
117. The Whale Watch.
CHAPTER
118. The Quadrant.
CHAPTER
119. The Candles.
CHAPTER
120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.
CHAPTER
121. Midnight.—The Forecastle Bulwarks.
CHAPTER
122. Midnight Aloft.—Thunder and Lightning.
CHAPTER
123. The Musket.
CHAPTER
124. The Needle.
CHAPTER
125. The Log and Line.
CHAPTER
126. The Life-Buoy.
CHAPTER
127. The Deck.
CHAPTER
128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel.
CHAPTER
129. The Cabin.
CHAPTER
130. The Hat.
CHAPTER
131. The Pequod Meets The Delight.
CHAPTER
132. The Symphony.
CHAPTER
133. The Chase—First Day.
CHAPTER
134. The Chase—Second Day.
CHAPTER
135. The Chase.—Third Day.
Epilogue
Moby
Dick is the antogonist in this story of a great white 'bull' sperm whale that fought back at
whalers who tried to harpoon him.
The idea came to
Herman Melville after
he spent time on a commercial whaler, where stories abounded of the
sinking of the Essex in 1821 and Mocha
Dick, a giant sperm whale that sank around 20 ships, before being
harpooned in 1838.
Herman
realised how fixated the sailors became, and he also became with the
thought that there was a whale that nobody could catch, that represented
a real risk to the whalers hunting whales, in that it was more sport
than commercial operations.
Without
any doubt this is one of the greatest novels coming out of America at
this time and way off the beaten track, making it so interesting,
reflecting the state of whaling and the economic importance in the
developing the nation - giving the general public a taste of something
adventurous that most people never think about.
Many
films and graphic novel adaptations have been inspired by the writings
of Herman Melville, from Marvel
and Disney
comics with good cause.
One
such production in 2020 is a graphic novel about a giant humpback whale
called Kulo
Luna, that sinks a modern whaling boat, much as depicted in Herman
Melville's Moby
Dick, except that is this day and age whales have explosive harpoons
to contend with, and sonar, from which there is no escape.
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