Call me Ishmael. Years ago, finding myself poor and aimless on land, I decided to sail and view the watery world. This is my method for curing melancholy and regulating my blood. Whenever my mouth grows grim, or my soul feels like a damp, drizzly November, I know it is time to leave. The urge becomes undeniable when I pause before coffin before warehouses, trail behind funerals, or feel a manic impulse to knock hats off in the street. Going to sea is my alternative to suicide. While Cato died on his sword with a flourish, I quietly board a ship. This impulse is not unique; almost all men feel a magnetic pull toward the ocean.
The world scorns whalemen yet burns candles to their glory—every lamp a shrine to their labor. Statistics prove the American fleet’s might: seven hundred vessels, eighteen thousand men, millions in annual yield. Dutch admirals commanded whaling fleets; Louis XVI fitted out ships from Dunkirk; Britain paid a million pounds in bounties. Something puissant drives this enterprise.
Beyond commerce, the whale-ship has shaped history. For sixty years no peaceful influence has operated more powerfully on the world. Whalemen pioneered the remotest seas, charting archipelagoes unknown to Cook or Vancouver. They broke Spain’s jealous monopoly on the Pacific coast, setting in motion the liberation of Peru, Chile, and Bolivia. They discovered Australia, fed its starving settlers, opened Polynesia to missionaries and merchants. Even bolted Japan owes its coming hospitality to the whale-ship at the threshold.
What of noble associations? Job wrote the first account of Leviathan; Alfred the Great composed the first whaling narrative; Burke pronounced eulogies in Parliament. Benjamin Franklin’s grandmother was a Nantucket Folger—whalemen’s blood runs in the veins of genius. English law declares the whale a “Royal Fish.” Roman triumphs displayed whale bones as trophies. Cetus itself blazes in the southern sky.
Ishmael closes with personal testament. Whatever honor or glory may await him, whatever undiscovered thing lies within, he ascribes to the whale-ship. It was his Yale College and his Harvard.
Ishmael justifies a speculative postscript to bolster whaling’s dignity. He notes the regal anointing of kings contrasts sharply with the common contempt for men who use hair oil. Eliminating other known oils, he deduces only sweet, unmanufactured sperm oil fits a coronation. He triumphantly declares whalemen supply the coronation oil for British royalty.
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