212 : The Atlantic 



positively identified the whale as the one that had sunk the ship was 

 the fact that large pieces of the ship's timbers and planks were still 

 embedded in the whale's hide. 



In 1901 the barque Cathleen was attacked by a wounded whale. The 

 hole created by the attack was so large that the ship began to sink at 

 once, leaving barely enough time for the captain and his wife and the 

 crew to get into three of the whaleboats. Fortunately, the vessel was 

 in the Atlantic, not far from the West Indies. One boat arrived at 

 Dominica, another at Barbados and the third was picked up by a 

 ship. There are other cases. 



I have heard critics, who otherwise liked Melville's great classic of 

 whaling, Moby Dic\, argue that the closing scene, in which Moby 

 Dick attacks and sinks the Pequod is too incredible to be an artistic 

 success. Yet the cases cited above show that this was not an unlikely 

 occurrence. In fact, it seems to me that there is no episode among all 

 those mentioned by Melville that is not already recorded in the log 

 books of some actual voyage. 



The whalers of Europe and America added many shores and 

 islands to our geographies. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries 

 whaling vessels from the Atlantic coast of the United States made 

 the most remote parts of the world familiar with the strength of 

 American ships and the courage and resourcefulness of American 

 seamen. 



At the beginning of the nineteenth century American whalers 

 were literally operating both in the Arctic and the Antarctic. In 1778 

 Cook sailed through the Bering Straits and explored the Arctic 

 coasts from Icy Point in America to Cape North in Siberia. It was 

 not long afterward that American whalers from the New England 

 coast were chasing the whale on these waters. As early as 1820 the 

 whale fisheries of the North Pacific had reached considerable pro- 

 portions. From this time on lost and shipwrecked American whalers 

 had the misfortune to arrive in Japanese waters. The best treatment 

 they could expect was humiliation, and from here on it ranged into 

 unspeakable brutaUty. In fact, it was the effort to rescue the stranded 

 whalers and to reach an agreement with Japan for a more humane 

 treatment that accounted for many repeated attempts to visit Japan 

 and establish diplomatic contact with that country. As early as 

 1837 an American ship, the Morrison, was bombarded from two dif- 

 ferent ports. Efforts continued, however, and culminated in Commo- 

 dore N. C. Perry's successful negotiations in 1854. 



In the meantime, on the other side of the Arctic, an English 



