some whale hunt in process

poster
(The Whale Hunt)

Whaling was once one of the United States great industries.  Whalers from Nantucket would sail all around the world for years at a time in chase of their quarry. In their sail driven ships, these whalers would often traverse unmapped section of the world. While those islands that were mapped often were understood to be inhabited by cannibals.

    Life on these boats was cramped, smelly, dangerous, and poorly paid. Wages paid to whalers were often 2-3 times less than the lowest paid shore laborer. Yet many men like Ishmael, or the writer Herman Melville himself, felt the calling to sign up for this hunt.

    Spermaceti, the best and most valuable oil, came from the great Sperm Whale. The Sperm whale, unlike all other commercially hunted whale, have been documented fighting back. The whaling ships Essex and Ann Alexander were sunk after encounters with angry Sperm Whales, and many a man lost his life in the countless other dangers that made up life on these whaling boats.

1:


"Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him?" cried Ahab, when, after the lapse of some minutes since the first cry, no more had been heard. "Sway me up, men; ye have been deceived; not moby dick casts one odd jet that way, and then disappears."
"Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!" cried Ahab, "thy hour and thy harpoon are at hand! - Down! down all of ye, but one man at the fore. The boats! - stand by!

2:"Pull, pull, my fine hearts-alive; pull, my children; pull, my little ones," drawingly and soothingly sighed Stubb to his crew, some of whom still showed signs of uneasiness. "Why don't you break your backbones, my boys? What is it you stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Tut! They are only five more hands come to help us - never mind from where - the more the merrier. Pull, then, do pull; never mind the brimstone - devils are good fellows enough. So, so; there you are now; that's the stroke for a thousand pounds; that's the stroke to sweep the stakes! Hurrah for the gold cup of sperm oil, my heroes!

3:Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play - this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

4:"Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Is not this harpoon for the White Whale?"
"For the white fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must make them thyself, man. Here are my razors - the best of steel; here, and make the barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the Icy Sea."
For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would fain not use them.
"Take them, man, I have no need for them; for I now neither shave, sup, nor pray till - but here - to work!"

5:

At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its advance - as the whale sometimes will - and Ahab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale's spout, curled round his great, Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the hated whale.

6:
"Great God! but for one single instant show thyself," cried Starbuck; "never, never wilt thou capture him, old man - In Jesus' name no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone - all good angels mobbing thee with warnings: - what more wouldst thou have? - Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh, - Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!"

7:



--Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles; then quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of ice, swiftly rising to the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard; a subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled with trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot lengthwise, but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of mist, it hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then fell swamping back into the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters flashed for an instant like heaps of fountains, then brokenly sank in a shower of flakes, leaving the circling surface creamed like new milk round the marble trunk of the whale.-- 

8:



Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.