Mocha Dick--Moby Dick: Myths?
History of Herman Melville's Legendary Sperm Whale Terrors
Apr 6, 2008
Several leviathan terrors may have roamed the seas. To discover the truth, a short history regarding the author of Moby Dick reveals some clues about these particular legendary whales.
Herman Melville
It may suffice to say that sea-water and whale oil instead of blood flooded the veins of Herman Melville, Moby Dick's author. Melville signed on the whaler, Acushnet (New Bedford). Prior to this voyage he sailed to England as a cabin boy. Adventurous young men seeking fame and fortune often did the same, especially when work waned on land and families needed their childrens' help with provisions.
The voyage was cruel due to the harsh leadership of the Acushnet's captain along with tedious labor. Ships compelled fastidious maintenance, including the work involved with catching and processing whales into whale oil.
Melville jumped ship at the Marquesas Islands. He was taken prisoner by cannibals, who took a liking to him and spared his life. He escaped the tribe after a few months.
Melville signed on board another whaler bound for the Tahitian Islands. From Tahiti he signed aboard yet another whaler headed for Honolulu. A stint with the American Navy took him from Honolulu to Boston. Honorably discharged (1844), Melville began his writing career.
Pacific Whale Terrors
Melville's life in the islands introduced him to island lore. He learned of the ferocious, white sperm whale, Mocha Dick. The creature was named after the Mocha Islands, off the Chilean coastline. This creature was the bane and hoped for prize of whaling ships-- his ferocity the foundation for legends. For roughly thirty years Mocha Dick terrorized his attackers: ...killed more than 30 men, and had attacked and damaged three whaling ships and 14 whaleboats. There were also claims that the white whale had sunk two merchant ships.
A manuscript written by J.N. Reynolds, Esq. in 1839, in The Knickerbocker Magazine out of New York describes Mocha Dick:
...This renowned monster, who had come off victorious in a hundred fights with his pursuers, was an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength... more probably from a freak of nature, ... he was white as wool!
...Numerous boats are known to have been shattered by his immense flukes, or ground to pieces in the crush of his powerful jaws; ...it is said that he came off victorious from a conflict with the crews of three English whalers,...
Like Moby Dick, Mocha Dick's back was riddled with harpoons. The giant was finally killed. He was blind in one eye and suffering from the infirmities associated with old, whale age, and no doubt by whatever damage all the harpoons incurred.
Whalemen, additionally, bestowed nicknames upon their leviathan nemeses, apparently, as Mellville refered to them in his book: ...Timor Jack...New Zealand Tom...Don Miquel...
Melville, also, was well acquainted with the fate of the Essex, a whaler that was rammed twice by a wounded sperm whale, causing the men on board to vacate the ship into the remaining longboats.
Similarities between the whales suggests that Mocha Dick was the inspiration for Moby Dick. Why the name, Moby? No one knows for sure. Perhaps, through literature, this was Melville's technique of harpooning this, 'sog o' the sea'.
Source
Frances Diane Robotti, Whaling and Old Salem, Fountainhead Publishers, 1962, New York 17, NY. pgs. 267-274.
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