“Call me Ishmael.” So Herman Melville, greets readers in his famous, largely autobiographical novel Moby Dick. It is, as well, a treatise on the business of whaling, which was very much a U.S. enterprise in its 19th Century peak time. In 1850, the U.S. had 200 flagged whaling ships at sea. I was drawn to sea stories and knew where Melville’s book was shelved in my high school library, but I was intimidated by its size.
Whaling vessels were built and made harbor, at Nantucket and New Bedford. Three hundred and twenty-nine were registered there. The Dartmouth bears mention. Larger, she served to transport quantities of whale oil, bone, and myriad other products of the industry from New England to Britain, the largest market. Its cargo back to Boston was East India Company tea. On Dec. 16, 1773, Dartmouth was one of three ships boarded at Boston, with casks of tea thrown into the harbor. This was the Boston Tea Party protest of taxes, a grievance against the crown that developed into revolution.
When the armada of whaling vessels had reduced the number of Atlantic whales to diminished profit, the owners set sail around Cape Horn to harvest in the Pacific. And, because of the hazards and distance, a whaler might remain at sea for three years or more before the ships barrels of sperm oil were filled. One recorded 11 years at sea. Difficult as it may be to imagine drifting alone in that vastness for so long, these venturers did much to gather Pacific lore. At least some of the crew maintained families in New England.
It was whalers who advanced charting of Pacific islands, and the U.S. war to drive the Spanish away from the Americas that extended colonialism to the Philippines and Guam. In 1853, President Fillmore had sent Commodore Perry with four warships into Tokyo Bay to promote trade and establish a ship coaling station there. An 1893 coup brought us the Hawaiian Islands. When the Japanese massively attacked Hawaii in 1941, all three U.S. aircraft carriers chanced to be at sea and could deliver a crippling blow to the Japanese at the Battle of Midway. By the time invasion of Okinawa came, 39 U.S. carriers stood by. Going forward the U.S would vie for control of the Pacific.
As early as 1497, England’s King Henry VIII sent John Cabot in search of a passage north of North America. There existed the notion that the salt in seawater prevented it from freezing. The venture was even tried overland. Pre-dating the famed 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition, Scottish explorer and fur trader Sir Alexander Mackenzie twice traversed Canada (1789 and 1793) following rivers down to the Arctic and Pacific Oceans.
Despite repeated failures, the British remained obsessed with finding a passage through the Arctic ice. In 1845, John Franklin set out with two ships and 129 men. Franklin’s ships and crews disappeared, apparently without a trace but, over time, their story was revealed. The following two summers brought no thaw of the ice that had locked Franklin’s ships fast that first winter. Illnesses took lives. With dwindling hope, the survivors set out on a 1,000-mile walk across the ice to a Hudson Bay station. The dead were buried beneath a cairn of stones, Records were left. Eventually a few survived through cannibalism. Recent searches located the position of the sunken ships. Sang Stan Rogers,
Westward from the Davis Strait
Tis there was said to lie
The sea route to the Orient,
For which so many died,
Seeking gold and glory,
Leaving weathered broken bones, and
A long forgotten lonely cairn of stones.
In 1820, a sperm whale attacked the Nantucket whaler Essex, sinking the ship. Melville, who in his youth had ventured into the occupation, learned of this disaster and fashioned his novel around that story.
The demonic Captain Ahab in Melville’s epic novel represents a quest for power and domination that is a death wish. Hubris will doom Ahab and his ship
Pequod. All the crew perish except for Ishmael, who tells the story. Is there a lesson to take away? Is the United States, with its careless quest for power not set on a destructive course?
In the midst of control of a different kind of oil, mining minerals from the ocean’s floor, paying little heed to global warming, hungering for profit, global garrisoning of forces, the American people placed in control of our ship of state a demonic figure who invites destruction.
Charlemont resident Carl Doerner is an investigative journalist and historian, currently working on publishing his newest work, “Breaking the Silence: Revisioning the American Narrative.”