.. < chapter xlv 24  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 earliest 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

.. <p 201 >

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,

.. <p 202 >

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 know 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 ocean-wide

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

.. <p 203 >

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 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.

.. <p 204 >

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


     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 tempted 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.

.. <p 205 >

Secondly: The ship Union, also of Nantucket, was in the year


     totally

lost off the Azores by a similar onset, but the authentic particulars of

this catastrophe I have never chanced to encounter, though from 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 after, 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

.. <p 206 >

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 uncommon 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.

.. <p 207 >

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

.. <p 208 >

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

.. <p 209 >

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.

.. <p 204n. >

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 which, according to their direction,  were

calculated to do us the most injury, by being made ahead, and thereby

.. <p 205n. >

combining the speed of the two objects for the shock; to effect which, the

exact manoeuvres which he made were necessary.  His aspect was most horrible,

and such as indicated resentment and fury.  He came directly from the shoal

which we had just before entered, and in which we had struck three of his

companions, as if fired with revenge for their sufferings.  Again: At all

events, the whole circumstances taken together, all happening before my own

eyes, and producing, at the time, impressions in my mind of decided,

calculating mischief, on the part of the whale (many of which impressions I

cannot now recall), induce me to be satisfied that I am correct in my

opinion.  Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during

a black night in an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any

hospitable shore.  The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing; the

fears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed upon hidden


     rocks, with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful contemplation, 

seemed scarcely entitled to a moment's thought; the dismal looking wreck,

and the horrid aspect and revenge of the whale, wholly engrossed my

reflections, until day again made its appearance.  In another place --p. 45,

--he speaks of the mysterious and mortal attack of the animal.

.. <p 209 >