Ahab, the Old Man

Herman Melville, around age 66

"God, God is against thee, old man; forbear!"

A persistent criticism of director John Huston's 1956 Moby Dick is that Gregory Peck was too young to play Captain Ahab.  Born in 1916, Peck was about 40 when the film was released -- more than ten years younger than Leo Genn, the actor who played Starbuck.  As some pointed out, it would have made more sense if Peck and Genn had switched roles.  Genn, however, while an accomplished British film actor with a splendid voice, had no star power.

A few remarks by Ahab in Chapter 132 ("The Symphony") enable the reader to pinpoint his age at the end of the novel's action as 58.  Ahab there tells Starbuck that he struck his first whale 40 years earlier, as "a boy-harpooneer of eighteen!"  But Ahab's all-around agedness is noted throughout the novel.  He is, among other things, a "scornful old man," "the queerest old man," a "monomaniac old man," an "ungodly old man," an "insane old man," a "wondrous old man," a "frantic old man," a "crazed old man."

(Others aboard the Pequod described as "old men" are the blacksmith, the cook, and most intriguingly, Fedallah (in Ch. 48).)

To Melville, who (mirabile dictu) was in his very early 30s while writing Moby-Dick, 58 must have seemed quite old.  To me, who hit 58 recently, it doesn't seem old at all.  Granted, I'm a landsman, "pent up in lath and plaster," not running around a ship on a peg leg and throwing lances at sperm whales.  Moreover, 58 was indeed old for a whaling captain.  The authors of In Pursuit of Leviathan gathered age data for 275 whaling voyages out of New Bedford between 1842 and 1858.  The oldest recorded man on any of those voyages was 62, and only 12 men were over 50.  (See the tables on pp. 94-96.)  As the authors point out (p. 90), "on 50 percent of the voyages for which we have [New Bedford] Port Society lists, the oldest man aboard was thirty-five or younger."  (Emphasis added.)

The significance of Ahab's being an old man has been much discussed.  From a purely practical standpoint, it helps make more believable that Ahab could bend the entire crew to his will, notwithstanding repeated bad omens and his occasionally dotty behavior.  The reader has to be willing to accept that even the intrepid whale-hunter Starbuck could not withstand the "spiritual terrors" that menaced him "from the concentrating brow" of the "enraged and mighty man."  (Ch. 26.)

The Whaleman's Lay

Who ain't a slave?  Tell me that.

When Ishmael describes (in Chapter XVI) how he came to choose the Pequod for his and Queequeg's voyage, he explains that whalemen were customarily compensated by means of an oddly denominated profit-sharing scheme:

I was already aware that in the whaling business they paid no wages; but all hands, including the captain, received certain shares of the profits called lays, and that these lays were proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of the ship’s company. I was also aware that being a green hand at whaling, my own lay would not be very large; but considering that I was used to the sea, could steer a ship, splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt that from all I had heard I should be offered at least the 275th lay—that is, the 275th part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage, whatever that might eventually amount to. And though the 275th lay was what they call a rather long lay, yet it was better than nothing; and if we had a lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the clothing I would wear out on it, not to speak of my three years’ beef and board, for which I would not have to pay one stiver.

Ishmael doesn't tell us a whole lot more about how lays worked; there was no need to for purposes of the story.  But fortunately for the curious, the system is very well explicated in a scholarly, highly detailed study of the nineteenth-century whaling industry, In Pursuit of Leviathan, by Lance E. Davis, Robert E. Gallman, and Karin Gleiter, published in 1997 by the University of Chicago as part of the National Bureau of Economic Research Series on Long-Term Factors in Economic Development.

First, to clear up one misconception, the lays were not sequentially numbered from the largest share to the smallest.  In other words, the system didn't involve person A getting a 10th, B getting an 11th, C getting a 12th, and so on, until every last investor and sailor was accounted for.  For one thing, such a system would never work mathematically -- you would exceed 100% by the time you got to the 26th share.

Instead, the numbers of the lays jumped.  For example, in the November 1843 voyage of the Abigail of New Bedford, the "shortest" lay (i.e., the largest share in compensation) was, unsurprisingly, the captain's, at 16 -- meaning one sixteenth (or 0.0625) of the profits, assuming there were any.   The first mate's lay was 29, the second mate's 50, the third mate's 72.  The cooper -- typically, one of the most important artisans on a whale ship -- got the 55th lay.  Each of the harpooneers (a/k/a "boatsteerers") got the 95th lay.  All the remaining lays were well above 100.  Added up, the lays totaled about three tenths, which left about seven tenths for the "owners," who could probably be more accurately referred to as partners.

According to In Pursuit, a 70-30 split of the profits between the owners/partners, on one hand, and the captain and crew, on the other, was typical.  In addition, looking at data from over a thousand whaling voyages out of New Bedford, the authors of In Pursuit found that the distribution of lays followed a pattern: captains tended to get lays in the mid-teens, first mates in the 20s, second mates in the 30s or 40s, third mates in the 50s or 60s, etc.  

One thing the data make clear is that Melville is having a bit of fun in Ishmael's long-lay episode.  Ishmael says that he hoped to get 275.  Captain Bildad offered him 777, and Captain Peleg, after remonstrating with Bildad, then settled on 300.  As he does so often in Moby-Dick, Melville is here exaggerating Ishmael's socio-economic insignificance.  Even Ishmael's aspirational lay of 275 was absurdly long -- no one in the In Pursuit data had a longer lay than 202,with unskilled seamen (or "greenhands") usually in the 175-190 range.  

How much a whaleman's lay actually turned out to be worth depended, of course, on how successful the voyage was.  The incentives built into the lay system were meant to encourage the men to work their hardest to fill the hold with oil.  If the voyage was truly disastrous (spoiler alert: like the Pequod's), the whalemen never returned at all.  An "average" voyage in the 1830s apparently brought back oil and baleen worth about $21,000 (in 1830s dollars) (see page 120 of In Pursuit).  After subtracting about $6,000 for expenses, you were left with about $15,000 to be divided among the owners/partners and crew.  Let's say that, realistically, someone in Ishmael's shoes would have had the 175th lay, which is what Melville in fact was assigned when he sailed aboard the Acushnet.  One 175th of $15,000 is $85.71.  If we plug that into the invaluable Purchasing Power calculator at Measuring Worth, we get $2,280 in today's dollars based on changes in the consumer price index.  If the voyage lasted exactly three years, that works out to $63 per month, plus "three years’ beef and board," for which Ishmael "would not have to pay one stiver."

Ishmael spoke the truth when he observed that "this was a poor way to accumulate a princely fortune ... a very poor way indeed."  But, he goes on with philosophic equanimity, he is "quite content if the world is ready to board and lodge [him], while [he is] putting up at this grim sign of the Thunder Cloud." 

Moby-Dick Written in the Style of White-Jacket

White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of War is, needless to say, Melville's fifth book and the one that immediately preceded Moby-Dick.  Some critic somewhere (Newton Arvin perhaps?) characterized White-Jacket as not fiction, but journalism.  Whoever said that, it's a fair characterization -- the book is, at least on its surface, a straightforward account of Melville's experiences serving on the USS United States in 1843-44, lightly dramatized and padded out with stories he'd picked up from other sailors and with some editorializing about the U.S. Navy (including his celebrated condemnation of flogging).

Only a year after White-Jacket's appearance (in 1850), Melville gave the world Moby-Dick.  I'm sure no one interested in the New Bedford MDM has to be told that the two books are as different as night and day. Or maybe distant thunder vs. lightning just outside your window would be a truer contrast.

It is widely believed, I think, that Moby-Dick started out as another White-Jacket, this time set on a whaler and with a bit more excitement to improve sales.  But along the way -- as happened with Mardi (1849) and Pierre (1852) -- something in Melville took over, and the work was transformed.

Yet what if Melville had been able to stick to the White-Jacket formula?  What would a "journalistic" Moby-Dick be like?  You can get a rough idea by reading Nimrod of the Sea; or, The American Whaleman.  Published in 1874 and now readily available on the Internet, Nimrod is a memoir by William M. Davis (1815-91) of his voyage on the whaler Chelsea in 1834-38.   It is based on a journal Davis kept intermittently during the voyage, but (as he explains) he fleshes that out with "the experiences and adventures of others, such as I have been enabled to pick up in the form of yarns on board the Chelsea," incorporating "the experiences of a quarter of a century."

Nimrod describes countless details of the work that whale hunting and processing involved (many of which will be familiar to Moby-Dick fans) and aspects of the whaleman's life in the Pacific that Moby-Dick doesn't touch (such as stopping at the Galapagos Islands for tortoises that would later be killed for fresh meat at sea, and dealing with the "land sharks" who inhabited barely civilized ports on the west coast of South America).  And Davis recounts the conclusion of the hunt, the demolition of the try-works (when its bricks were joyously thrown overboard), and the return home -- topics that Moby-Dick doesn't get into, for obvious reasons.

While Davis doesn't mention Moby-Dick or Melville anywhere in his memoir, he has a few passages so reminiscent of the earlier work that it's hard to imagine he hadn't read it.  One example is the semi-erotic "spermaceti bath," when Davis and his mates use their bodies to process the material from the "case" in the sperm whale's head:

With our hands blistered yesterday by the oar, and all on fire to-day by the harsh friction of the handspike, it was luxurious to wade deep in the try-pots filled with this odorous unguent, in order to squeeze and strain out the fibres, which, if allowed to remain, would char with the heat, and darken the oil. No king of earth, even Solomon in all his glory, could command such a bath. I almost fell in love with the touch of my own poor legs, as I stroked the precious ointment from the skin.

Another example is the cautious, halting way in which the mates go to dine with the captain:

The steward comes up the companion-way, and touching his greasy Scotch cap, announces, "Captain B----, dinner is on." "All right;" and the captain takes a turn by the binnacle, if we are running a course, and peeps at the compass. Then in the companion-way, on his way down he stops, takes a long look at the sails, and, as it were, a last farewell of the light of heaven. "Mr. F----, dinner is on." "Ay, ay, sir," says the mate, as he strolls to weather-deck. Now Mr. F---- takes a shorter peep at the compass, and, pausing in the companion, he, too, takes his upward survey. The two other mates go through precisely the same performance, only according to their respective ranks they take yet shorter peeps at the compass and glance heavenward. They then arrive simultaneously at the table, to find the captain and Mr. F---- leisurely in their second plateful. Now, the misery of the arrangement is in this: the officers must come up in reversed order -- third, second, first mate, and lastly the captain. A third mate has thus only about seven and a half moments to dispose of his grub. The old man last of all appears on deck, picking his satisfied teeth in the most tantalizing manner, and the four boat-steerers next make a dash for the table, and make clean sweep of the remnants.

Don't those descriptions sound familiar! 

Unlike Moby-Dick, Nimrod doesn't involve a white whale or a stove ship (although Davis does provide a yarn about the sinking of the Nantucket whaler Union after being rammed by a whale).  Also unlike Moby-Dick, Nimrod does include illustrations -- quite a few, and quite detailed.  If some of them look familiar, it's probably because you've seen them in the commentary at the end of the Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick (with appropriate credit, of course).

(For the details on William Davis, thanks to Honore Forster's annotated bibliography on 19th-century whaling in the Pacific, The South Sea Whaler, published in 1985 by the Kendall Whaling Museum, Sharon, Mass., and Edward J. Lefkowicz, Inc., Fairhaven, Mass.)

Charles W. Morgan coming to New Bedford!

The schedule is public — The restored Charles W. Morgan ("the last wooden whaleship in the world") will sail into New Bedford this June, and stay for the 4th of July and the New Bedford Folk Festival.

That's June 28 through July 6. Save the dates.

That Mast in Mattapoisett

A visit with globe-trotting friends (ciao, Giulia) brought me to Mattapoisett; my first time in this whaleship-building town. The plaque in Shipyard Park summarizes its importance to Melvillians.

Commemorating
Mattapoisett's Shipbuilders

From the year 1752 to 1878 at least six shipyards
flourished along this waterfront from the foot of
Pearl Street to Ship Street (Cannonville). The fine
harbor, an abundant supply of virgin timber, and a
ready market for whaling and maritime commerce
attracted the finest of shipbuilders. Barks, brigs,
schooners, sloops and merchant ships were built and
launched here. When the whaling industry was at its
height in New Bedford, Mattapoisett became world
famous for its whaleships. More than 350 vessels
went down the ways during this period. Among the
most famous were:

"Acushnet," ship, 1840, which carried as a crew
member Herman Melville, on her maiden voyage.
Ten years later he wrote the famous whaling
saga "Moby Dick." [sic]

"Platina," ship, 1847, distinguished for capturing
a white whale.

"Wanderer," bark, 1878, last whaleship to be
built in Mattapoisett yards, and one of the
last whalers to sail from New Bedford.

Mattapoisett Bicentennial Committee 1976

The story of the Platina is told here, on the Whaling Museum's site.

The Wanderer is featured in actual whaling scenes in the 1922 film Down to the Sea in Ships (with Clara Bow in the first year of her movie career). If you visit Arrowhead, you can watch a DVD copy which plays in the small shed behind the house. On August 27, 1924 the Wanderer was wrecked on Middle Ground Shoal, between New Bedford and Martha's Vineyard. This page displays an interesting artifact from the Wanderer — its mailbox.

I had read on several websites that the Wanderer's mizzen-mast is now the flagpole in Shipyard Park, but that is not exactly true.

Walk up to the flagpole and you'll see the bottom section is a conventional steel pipe. About two-thirds of the way up, another piece is joined to this steel pole. Is this top section part of the Wanderer's mast? Well, not anymore. According to the Mattapoisett Yacht Club,

...Ship Yard Park is the site of Jonathan Holmes’s shipyard, where in 1878, the last whaler of Mattapoisett, the Wanderer, was built. The flagpole in the park originally was the mizzen mast from that ship. However, lightning strikes and hurricanes took their toll, and the pole was replaced in 1993.

So what became of the old mast-cum-flagpole after it was removed from Shipyard Park? It is reported to have been donated to the Mattapoisett Historical Society Museum in November, 2012. (Who had it in the intervening 19 years!?) A return road-trip beckons.

The Morgan afloat

Before launch (photo: Claire Whitehouse)

Earlier today the world's last surviving wooden whaleship, the Charles W. Morgan, was re-floated at Mystic Seaport, right on schedule. Read the report in the New York Times, and look back at the fascinating daily details of the restoration in the "Shipwright's Blog." (Marvel at the dedication of the volunteers, and moreover, the skills and techniques of the artisans.)

Restoration of the ship's framing and planking began in 2008. At this point, the new masts and rigging have yet to be installed, but today's launch marks a significant milestone.

Restoration of the Charles W. Morgan

Charles W. Morgan
courtesy of Ian.macky

Built in 1841, the Charles W. Morgan is the world's oldest surviving merchant vessel (according to Wikipedia), and the world's last wooden whaleship. Since 1941, "she" has been in the care of Mystic Seaport.

Restoration of the Morgan's framing and planking began in 2008. The plan is to relaunch the Morgan in July, 2013. Read about the work at the Preservation magazine website.

Another hat-tip to brother T.!

Aboard a Whaler

Those who have never taken the trouble or never have had an opportunity of visiting a whale-ship, fitted for a three years' cruize beyond Cape Horn, will be ignorant of what they have lost, until a leisure moment is profitably employed in that way.  There, between the plank and timbers of a ship of four hundred tons, is a little world; a monarchy in miniature, with an Emperor whose power is absolute as that of the Moon's twin brother who reigns in China, and with occupations as various as are to be found in a house of industry.  There is employed at his forge a blacksmith, and here, as deliberately following his vocation, a carpenter, while near at hand is to be seen the sail maker, pursuing the even tenor of his seam, and whiling away the time with a song. The whole deck, from the tafrail to the heel of the bowsprit, presents to the eye of the beholder, the idea and the picture of a community who knows of nothing beyond the bulwarks, and to whom every thing farther off was the same as if it never had existed.  Just forward of the mainmast is seen, deeply embedded in bricks and mortar, a huge boiler, that looks as if the waters of the Pacific itself were to be heated, and the whale and misshapen walrus boiled to a jelly, and started into casks for New England consumption.  Abaft this is the camboose, or "office of the doctor," as the sailors are in the habit of calling the cook, and truly it is a place that will be looked upon, for the three succeeding years, with not a little interest, as the source from whence emanates the supplies of beef and pork, but without any thing peculiar to recommend it to the attention of strangers, who are less interested.

--from "A Whaler," the Washington Daily National Intelligencer, April 30, 1829 (quoted in vol. 1 of Hershel Parker's Herman Melville: A Biography, p. 183 [1996]).

Did the Pequod Have a Poop Deck?

As I've elsewhere alluded to, my earliest mental images of the characters and settings of Moby-Dick drew upon the 1956 film directed by John Huston.  And because, in the film, the Pequod has a poop deck, I assumed for decades that that was what Melville had envisioned.  (I was also so hopelessly confused that I thought a "quarterdeck" was, by definition, a "poop deck.")

Huston's realization of the Pequod was constrained by the materials he had available.  The film's Pequod -- nicely observable in this YouTube clip from the movie -- had earlier served as the Hispaniola in the Disney version of Treasure Island and had first seen the light of day in 1887, when it was christened the Ryelands (according to Wikipedia).

As I now understand, "quarterdeck" refers simply to "[t]hat part of the upper or spar-deck which extends between the stern and after-mast, and is used as a promenade by the superior officers or cabin-passengers" (per the OED). It might be raised ... and it might not.  If it's raised (and has several other characteristics that I don't fully grasp), it's a generally called a poop.  But "poop" might also be used to refer to the stern, period; hence, we sometimes find the phrase "raised poop," which at first glance might appear to be redundant.  Then there are "raised quarterdecks," which some say are the same as poops, while others make a distinction. 

In any event, I'm using "poop deck" here to mean a quarterdeck that's a few steps higher than the rest of the main deck, like that shown in the John Huston Pequod.  For another example, here's a nice photo of the main deck of an 1877 sailing ship, the Elissa, with a poop deck.

Melville, as far as I can tell, does not directly indicate whether the Pequod had a poop deck.  From his memorable description in Chapter XVI ("The Ship"), we learn that this "rare old craft" had been in service as a whaler for "more than half a century[.]"  Thus, if we assume that Ishmael shipped aboard her in the same year that Melville sailed aboard the Acushnet -- i.e., 1841 -- then she must have been a whaler since before 1791.  On top of that, we don't know if she began life as a whaler or was converted from some other purpose.  We cannot assume, then, that the Pequod's architecture matched that of vessels built in the 19th century.

Still, for what it may be worth, the whaleship Lagoda, built in 1826 and a half-size model of which forms one of the crown jewels of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, did not have a raised quarterdeck.  She started out as a merchant ship and, some 15 years later, was refurbished as a whaler.  The companionway leading down to the living quarters below the quarterdeck was protected by a boxy deckhouse on one side of the quarterdeck.  (By contrast, in the movie's Pequod, as in most tall ships represented on film, the companionway is through double doors in the face of the quarterdeck [or the forward bulkhead?], like the portal at the top of a cuckoo clock.)  The Lagoda also had a skylight running fore and aft next to the deckhouse, protecting the steersman's compass and lighting the aftercabin salon.  The Pequod, we learn in Chapter XXXIV ("The Cabin-Table") had a skylight as well, through which one could peep at the captain and mates at dinner.

A Lagoda-like layout is what Mead Schaeffer shows us in one of his colorful illustrations to the 1923 Dodd Mead Moby-Dick.  (All the illustrations are beautifully reproduced here; scroll down to the one showing Ahab on the quarterdeck.)  But since it's possible that Schaeffer based his illustration on the Lagoda model, which was begun in 1916, his illustration should not be taken as a separate data point. 

Melville's reference to a skylight through which one could see the mates dining may suggest that the Pequod did not have a poop deck.  In addition, his mention of the Town-Ho's poop in Chapter LIV may indicate that, when a ship has a poop, Melville says so. 

Until additional evidence comes in, Melville's silence on the subject is enough for me: I hold that the Pequod did not have a poop deck.  In the words of U.S. Sen. James F. Simmons, of Rhode Island, during congressional debates over secession:

[T]he distinguished senator from Texas says that the old men who made this Constitution, of all things in the world, knew nothing about it; that they were very good men for generals, and such like, but they knew nothing about the Constitution.  Well, sir, they are good enough authority for me.

(Quoted in David P. Currie's The Constitution in Congress: Descent into the Maelstrom, 1829-1861.)

Nantucket whaleship found after 188 years

Today marine archaeologists in Hawaii announced the discovery of Captain Pollard's whaleship Two Brothers, out of Nantucket and wrecked on a reef on February 11, 1823.

The full story is reported by the New York Times and the Associated Press.

A Second Opinion on Whalers

In his Two Years before the Mast, future maritime lawyer Richard Henry Dana, Jr., has some passing remarks about whalers.  What he has to say is fascinating because it provides a view of whale ships from the outside, as it were, and because he wrote in a straightforward, trustworthy, journalistic style so different from Melville's wont.  His reference in this passage to a whaler's "stump top-gallant masts" and "slovenly" appearance has always stuck with me (emphasis added):

Putting the boat's head in the direction of the ship, the captain told us to lay out again; and we needed no spurring, for the prospect of boarding a new ship, perhaps from home, hearing the news and having something to tell of when we got back, was excitement enough for us, and we gave way with a will. Captain Nye, of the Loriotte, who had been an old whaleman, was in the stern-sheets, and fell mightily into the spirit of it. "Bend your backs and break your oars!" said he. "Lay me on, Captain Bunker!" "There she flukes!" and other exclamations, peculiar to whalemen. In the meantime, it fell flat calm, and being within a couple of miles of the ship, we expected to board her in a few moments, when a sudden breeze sprung up, dead ahead for the ship, and she braced up and stood off toward the islands, sharp on the larboard tack, making good way through the water. This, of course, brought us up, and we had only to "ease larboard oars; pull round starboard!" and go aboard the Alert, with something very like a flea in the ear. There was a light land-breeze all night, and the ship did not come to anchor until the next morning. As soon as her anchor was down, we went aboard, and found her to be the whaleship, Wilmington and Liverpool Packet, of New Bedford, last from the "off-shore ground," with nineteen hundred barrels of oil. A "spouter" we knew her to be as soon as we saw her, by her cranes and boats, and by her stump top-gallant masts, and a certain slovenly look to the sails, rigging, spars and hull; and when we got on board, we found everything to correspond,—spouter fashion. She had a false deck, which was rough and oily, and cut up in every direction by the chimes of oil casks; her rigging was slack and turning white; no paint on the spars or blocks; clumsy seizings and straps without covers, and homeward-bound splices in every direction. Her crew, too, were not in much better order. Her captain was a slab-sided, shamble-legged Quaker, in a suit of brown, with a broad-brimmed hat, and sneaking about decks, like a sheep, with his head down; and the men looked more like fishermen and farmers than they did like sailors.