CHAPTER 45
The Affidavit
So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed, as
indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars in the
habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier part, is as
important a one as will be found in this volume; but the leading matter of it
requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged upon, in order to be
adequately understood, and moreover to take away any incredulity which a
profound ignorance of the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to
the natural verity of the main points of this affair.
I care not to perform this part of my task methodically; but shall be
content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of items,
practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman; and from these
citations, I take it— the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of itself.
First: I have personally known three instances where a whale, after
receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after an interval
(in one instance of three years), has been again struck by the same hand,
and slain; when the two irons, both marked by the same private cypher,
have been taken from the body. In the instance where three years intervened
between the flinging of the two harpoons; and I think it may have been
something more than that; the man who darted them happening, in the
interval, to go in a trading ship on a voyage to Africa, went ashore there,
joined a discovery party, and penetrated far into the interior, where he
travelled for a period of nearly two years, often endangered by serpents,
savages, tigers, poisonous miasmas, with all the other common perils
incident to wandering in the heart of unknown regions. Meanwhile, the
whale he had struck must also have been on its travels; no doubt it had
thrice circumnavigated the globe, brushing with its flanks all the coasts of
Africa; but to no purpose. This man and this whale again came together, and
the one vanquished the other. I say I, myself, have known three instances
similar to this; that is in two of them I saw the whales struck; and, upon the
second attack, saw the two irons with the respective marks cut in them,
afterwards taken from the dead fish. In the three-year instance, it so fell out
that I was in the boat both times, first and last, and the last time distinctly
recognized a peculiar sort of huge mole under the whale’s eye, which I had
observed there three years previous. I say three years, but I am pretty sure it
was more than that. Here are three instances, then, which I personally know
the truth of; but I have heard of many other instances from persons whose
veracity in the matter there is no good ground to impeach.
Secondly: It is well known in the Sperm Whale Fishery, however
ignorant the world ashore may be of it, that there have been several
memorable historical instances where a particular whale in the ocean has
been at distant times and places popularly cognisable. Why such a whale
became thus marked was not altogether and originally owing to his bodily
peculiarities as distinguished from other whales; for however peculiar in
that respect any chance whale may be, they soon put an end to his
peculiarities by killing him, and boiling him down into a peculiarly valuable
oil. No: the reason was this: that from the fatal experiences of the fishery
there hung a terrible prestige of perilousness about such a whale as there did
about Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that most fishermen were content to
recognise him by merely touching their tarpaulins when he would be
discovered lounging by them on the sea, without seeking to cultivate a more
intimate acquaintance. Like some poor devils ashore that happen to known
an irascible great man, they make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in
the street, lest if they pursued the acquaintance further, they might receive a
summary thump for their presumption.
But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual
celebrity—nay, you may call it an oceanwide renown; not only was he
famous in life and now is immortal in forecastle stories after death, but he
was admitted into all the rights, privileges, and distinctions of a name; had
as much a name indeed as Cambyses or Caesar. Was it not so, O Timor
Tom! thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg, who so long did’st lurk
in the Oriental straits of that name, whose spout was oft seen from the
palmy beach of Ombay? Was it not so, O New Zealand Jack! thou terror of
all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the vicinity of the Tattoo Land? Was
it not so, O Morquan! King of Japan, whose lofty jet they say at times
assumed the semblance of a snow-white cross against the sky? Was it not
so, O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked like an old tortoise with
mystic hieroglyphics upon the back! In plain prose, here are four whales as
well known to the students 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,
that with all his pumps going he made straight for the nearest port to heave
down and repair. I am not superstitious, but I consider the Commodore’s
interview with that whale as providential. Was not Saul of Tarsus converted
from unbelief by a similar fright? I tell you, the sperm whale will stand no
nonsense.
I will now refer you to Langsdorff’s Voyages for a little circumstance in
point, peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof. Langsdorff, you must
know by the way, was attached to the Russian Admiral Krusenstern’s
famous Discovery Expedition in the beginning of the present century.
Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth chapter:
“By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, and the next day we
were out in the open sea, on our way to Ochotsh. The weather was very
clear and fine, but so intolerably cold that we were obliged to keep on our
fur clothing.
For some days we had very little wind; it was not till the nineteenth that a
brisk gale from the northwest sprang up. An uncommonly large whale, the
body of which was larger than the ship itself, lay almost at the surface of the
water, but was not perceived by any one on board till the moment when the
ship, which was in full sail, was almost upon him, so that it was impossible
to prevent its striking against him. We were thus placed in the most
imminent danger, as this gigantic creature, setting up its back, raised the
ship three feet at least out of the water. The masts reeled, and the sails fell
altogether, while we who were below all sprang instantly upon the deck,
concluding that we had struck upon some rock; instead of this we saw the
monster sailing off with the utmost gravity and solemnity. Captain D’Wolf
applied immediately to the pumps to examine whether or not the vessel had
received any damage from the shock, but we found that very happily it had
escaped entirely uninjured.”
Now, the Captain D’Wolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in
question, is a New Englander, who, after a long life of unusual adventures
as a sea-captain, this day resides in the village of Dorchester near Boston. I
have the honor of being a nephew of his. I have particularly questioned him
concerning this passage in Langsdorff. He substantiates every word. The
ship, however, was by no means a large one: a Russian craft built on the
Siberian coast, and purchased by my uncle after bartering away the vessel
in which he sailed from home.
In that up and down manly book of old-fashioned adventure, so full, too,
of honest wonders—the voyage of Lionel Wafer, one of ancient Dampier’s
old chums—I found a little matter set down so like that just quoted from
Langsdorff, that I cannot forbear inserting it here for a corroborative
example, if such be needed.
Lionel, it seems, was on his way to “John Ferdinando,” as he calls the
modern Juan Fernandes. “In our way thither,” he says, “about four o’clock
in the morning, when we were about one hundred and fifty leagues from the
Main of America, our ship felt a terrible shock, which put our men in such
consternation that they could hardly tell where they were or what to think;
but every one began to prepare for death. And, indeed, the shock was so
sudden and violent, that we took it for granted the ship had struck against a
rock; but when the amazement was a little over, we cast the lead, and
sounded, but found no ground. … The suddenness of the shock made the
guns leap in their carriages, and several of the men were shaken out of their
hammocks. Captain Davis, who lay with his head on a gun, was thrown out
of his cabin!” Lionel then goes on to impute the shock to an earthquake, and
seems to substantiate the imputation by stating that a great earthquake,
somewhere about that time, did actually do great mischief along the
Spanish land. But I should not much wonder if, in the darkness of that early
hour of the morning, the shock was after all caused by an unseen whale
vertically bumping the hull from beneath.
I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another known
to me, of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale. In more
than one instance, he has been known, not only to chase the assailing boats
back to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long withstand all the
lances hurled at him from its decks. The English ship Pusie Hall can tell a
story on that head; and, as for his strength, let me say, that there have been
examples where the lines attached to a running sperm whale have, in a
calm, been transferred to the ship, and secured there! the whale towing her
great hull through the water, as a horse walks off with a cart. Again, it is
very often observed that, if the sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time to
rally, he then acts, not so often with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate
designs of destruction to his pursuers; nor is it without conveying some
eloquent indication of his character, that upon being attacked he will
frequently open his mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion for several
consecutive minutes. But I must be content with only one more and a
concluding illustration; a remarkable and most significant one, by which
you will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvellous event in this
book corroborated by plain facts of the present day, but that these marvels
(like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages; so that for the millionth
time we say amen with Solomon—Verily there is nothing new under the
sun.
In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian magistrate of
Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor and Belisarius
general.
As many know, he wrote the history of his own times, a work every way
of uncommon value. By the best authorities, he has always been considered
a most trustworthy and unexaggerating historian, except in some one or two
particulars, not at all affecting the matter presently to be mentioned.
Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term of
his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured in the
neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed vessels at
intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty years. A fact thus set
down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid. Nor is there any
reason it should be. Of what precise species this sea-monster was, is not
mentioned. But as he destroyed ships, as well as for other reasons, he must
have been a whale; and I am strongly inclined to think a sperm whale. And I
will tell you why. For a long time I fancied that the sperm whale had been
always unknown in the Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting with
it.
Even now I am certain that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be,
in the present constitution of things, a place for his habitual gregarious
resort. But further investigations have recently proved to me, that in modern
times there have been isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale
in the Mediterranean. I am told, on good authority, that on the Barbary
coast, a Commodore Davis of the British navy found the skeleton of a
sperm whale. Now, as a vessel of war readily passes through the
Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route, pass out of the
Mediterranean into the Propontis.
In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar substance
called brit is to be found, the aliment of the right whale. But I have every
reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale— squid or cuttle-fish—
lurks at the bottom of that sea, because large creatures, but by no means the
largest of that sort, have been found at its surface. If, then, you properly put
these statements together, and reason upon them a bit, you will clearly
perceive that, according to all human reasoning, Procopius’s sea-monster,
that for half a century stove the ships of a Roman Emperor, must in all
probability have been a sperm whale.
