Moby Dick

of Cetacean History as Marius or Sylla to the classic scholar.

But this is not all.  New Zealand Tom and Don Miguel, after at various
times creating great havoc among the boats of different vessels,
were finally gone in quest of, systematically hunted out,
chased and killed by valiant whaling captains, who heaved up their
anchors with that express object as much in view, as in setting
out through the Narragansett Woods, Captain Butler of old had it
in his mind to capture that notorious murderous savage Annawon,
the headmost warrior of the Indian King Philip.

I do not know where I can find a better place than just here,
to make mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important,
as in printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness
of the whole story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe.
For this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires
full as much bolstering as error.  So ignorant are most landsmen of some
of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without
some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise,
of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable,
or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.

First:  Though most men have some vague flitting ideas of the general
perils of the grand fishery, yet they have nothing like a fixed, vivid
conception of those perils, and the frequency with which they recur.
One reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty of the actual disasters
and deaths by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a public record
at home, however transient and immediately forgotten that record.
Do you suppose that that poor fellow there, who this moment perhaps
caught by the whale-line off the coast of New Guinea, is being
carried down to the bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan--
do you suppose that that poor fellow's name will appear in the newspaper
obituary you will read to-morrow at your breakfast?  No:  because the
mails are very irregular between here and New Guinea.  In fact,
did you ever hear what might be called regular news direct or indirect
from New Guinea?  Yet I will tell you that upon one particular voyage
which I made to the Pacific, among many others we spoke thirty
different ships, every one of which had had a death by a whale,
some of them more than one, and three that had each lost a boat's crew.
For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon
you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.

Secondly:  People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea
that a whale is an enormous creature of enormous power;
but I have ever found that when narrating to them some specific
example of this two-fold enormousness, they have significantly
complimented me upon my facetiousness; when, I declare upon
my soul, I had no more idea of being facetious than Moses,
when he wrote the history of the plagues of Egypt.

But fortunately the special point I here seek can be established
upon testimony entirely independent of my own.  That point is this:
The Sperm Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing,
and judiciously malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in,
utterly destroy, and sink a large ship; and what is more,
the Sperm Whale has done it.

First:  In the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard,
of Nantucket, was cruising in the Pacific Ocean.  One day
she saw spouts, lowered her boats, and gave chase to a shoal
of sperm whales.  Ere long, several of the whales were wounded;
when, suddenly, a very large whale escaping from the boats,
issued from the shoal, and bore directly down upon the ship.
Dashing his forehead against her hull, he so stove her in,
that in less than "ten minutes" she settled down and fell over.
Not a surviving plank of her has been seen since.
After the severest exposure, part of the crew reached the land
in their boats.  Being returned home at last, Captain Pollard
once more sailed for the Pacific in command of another ship,
but the gods shipwrecked him again upon unknown rocks and breakers;
for the second time his ship was utterly lost, and forthwith
forswearing the sea, he has never attempted it since.
At this day Captain Pollard is a resident of Nantucket.  I have
seen Owen Chace, who was chief mate of the Essex at the time
of the tragedy; I have read his plain and faithful narrative;
I have conversed with his son; and all this within a few miles
of the scene of the catastrophe.*


*The following are extracts from Chace's narrative:
"Every fact seemed to warrant me in concluding that it was
anything but chance which directed his operations; he made two
several attacks upon the ship, at a short interval between them,
both of this catastrophe I have never chanced to their direction,
were calculated to do us the whale hunters I have now and then
heard casual allusions to it.

Thirdly:  Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore J---then commanding
an American sloop-of-war of the first class, happened to be dining
with a party of whaling captains, on board a Nantucket ship in the
harbor of Oahu, Sandwich Islands.  Conversation turning upon whales,
the Commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the amazing
strength ascribed to them by the professional gentlemen present.
He peremptorily denied for example, that any whale could
so smite his stout sloop-of-war as to cause her to leak so much
as a thimbleful.  Very good; but there is more coming.
Some weeks later, the Commodore set sail in this impregnable craft
for Valparaiso.  But he was stopped on the way by a portly sperm whale,
that begged a few moments' confidential business with him.
That business consisted in fetching the Commodore's craft such a thwack,