From Moby Dick to Big Blue
Skeleton of Big Blue, Beaty Biodiversity Museum, UBC, Vancouver. Pat Sullivan, 2025.
Why read Moby-Dick today? It was on my list for awhile, as Herman Melville and his epic novel are referred to so often in books on writing. But it never seemed urgent. There is so much to read! Who has time for a 726-page whale of a book (pun intended) with typical 19th-century long descriptions and convoluted language? And, other than agreeing that whales should not be held in captivity, I had no interest in them.
But a fluke (no pun intended) connection started me on my path from ‘someday’ to ‘now or never.’ Last summer, I randomly googled the name of an old friend with whom I’d lost touch, Andrea Kirkpatrick, and found a link to a book she had written: A Game of Chance: The Story of British North American South Seas Whaling. After contacting her through the publisher, Friesen Press, I read her historical narrative. She combed archives from Canada to Australia to provide a compelling tale of the whaling expeditions that set out from colonial New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Among many other facts, I enjoyed learning about the camaraderie that existed on the high seas, as whaling ships met, the captains spoke to each other, and sometimes ‘gammed’—visited each others’ ships. No doubt the confinement of shipboard life and the dangers of the business motivated them to share stories and information. Her factual, well-researched account of the whaling industry offered just enough details of the human experience to intrigue me. I knew the time had come to grapple with Melville’s fictional version.
Grapple is the word. The thick copy I borrowed from the library was a leviathan of a book, to borrow Melville’s word, too cumbersome to read in bed at night. I committed to one hour a day, propping the tome on a cushion on my lap, to get through it. Six weeks later, I finished it.
‘Call me Ishmael’. Why is this opening sentence of Moby-Dick one of the most resonant of any novel? Its shortness is deceptive, as it leads us into a long and complex book. I think its power stems from what it leaves out, the greeting to the reader. Implied is ‘You may’: You may call me Ishmael. He speaks directly to us, inviting us to follow him on his adventure, from Nantucket to the Pacific Ocean aboard the whaling ship Pequod. Moby-Dick is not a casual read, but the fact that it is told in short chapters propelled me along.
It's a book that few people I spoke to had read, but everyone seemed to know that it is about the obsessed Captain Ahab and his search for the white sperm whale that had bitten off his lower leg. What I was not prepared for was how viscerally Melville describes life at sea and the chase when the lookout sights a whale. The men scramble into action, lowering small boats that are tossed about on the open ocean as they row madly towards their prey. After the harpooner strikes successfully, they battle with the wounded mammal as it thrashes, trying to escape. Processing begins with hauling up the carcass to the side of the ship, cutting off the blubber, rendering the valued oil in the brick furnace, and storing it in barrels. Then they cleaned up and began the watch for the next whale. Ishmael not only tells us what happened in straightforward immersive scenes but expounds on the physical characteristics of whales and the symbolism of the colour white. The language varies from colloquial American English to Biblical prophecy and Shakespearian soliloquies; I let many chapters wash over me, but I always regained my footing when the story returned to the Pequod.
Melville knew that whale stocks were diminishing by the 1850s, as ships had to travel farther in search of them. Kerosene, derived from the recently discovered petroleum, replaced whale oil as a lighting source. Yet whaling has continued into the 21st century, even though the International Whaling Commission adopted a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982. The small boats of Melville’s era, lowering from the big ship to launch a chase, have given way to vessels from Greenpeace or Sea Shepherd Global that now confront rogue industrial whalers.
Perhaps you could say that in Melville’s era they had reached ‘peak whale.’ Almost two centuries after Moby-Dickappeared, we now are reaching ‘peak oil’, and trying, in fits and starts, to change to more sustainable energy sources. I couldn’t help comparing the gut-wrenching descriptions in Moby-Dick to what I’ve read about drilling for oil. Another job that takes place far away from the people who enjoy the comforts of the end product, it is also dangerous. The workers handle heavy machinery and harsh elements. Extraction of any type takes its toll on nature and on the human beings who do the dirty work it demands.
I picture Melville writing at night, by the light of a whale-oil lamp or candles made from sperm whales, penning the ocean of words that is Moby-Dick. He made Ishmael an omniscient narrator, with uncanny knowledge not just of history and philosophy, but also of his shipmates. Ishmael recounts conversations between the mates that he could not have heard, and dives into the dark innermost thoughts of the bedevilled Captain Ahab. Among the many themes of Moby-Dick is obsession and the power of nature, but I never felt it was didactic. Melville’s gripping descriptions inspired sympathy for the whale and the men inhabiting this remote yet human world.
Curiousity compelled my friend Andrea to write her book, as she studied two Easter Island artifacts in the museum where she worked and speculated on the New Brunswick whaler who had brought them back. Curiousity drove me to make my own expedition. Not as arduous as Ishmael’s, it meant riding the 99 bus to the UBC campus to visit the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. A skeleton of a blue whale, called Big Blue, hangs in their atrium. It left me speechless. As long as two buses, its heart would have been the size of a car! Although Moby-Dick describes the killing of sperm and right whales, which are smaller, they are still colossal. It must have been astounding, to a sailor on the Pequod, to see and then confront such huge creatures.
I now know more about whales than I ever thought I would, and I still know so little. But I have a new sympathy for these magnificent mammals, inspired by Moby-Dick and enhanced by seeing Big Blue. Not a bad legacy from a book I hadn’t intended to read.