{"id":"01KFNR871B6Y3MWSK7KMEGC9NN","cid":"bafkreibtl6rdx42rx6v5d2beddqh3n7hp3h4nyoxpqwcfie4byeijydx4i","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":4868,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:01.922Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":4807,"text":"America now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world;\r\nsail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen\r\nthousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth,\r\nat the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year importing into our\r\nharbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all this, if\r\nthere be not something puissant in whaling?\r\n\r\nBut this is not the half; look again.\r\n\r\nI freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life,\r\npoint out one single peaceful influence, which within the last sixty\r\nyears has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world, taken\r\nin one aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way\r\nand another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so\r\ncontinuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may\r\nwell be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves\r\npregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to\r\ncatalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many years past\r\nthe whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and\r\nleast known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes\r\nwhich had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If\r\nAmerican and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage\r\nharbors, let them fire salutes to the honor and glory of the\r\nwhale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted\r\nbetween them and the savages. They may celebrate as they will the\r\nheroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I\r\nsay that scores of anonymous Captains have sailed out of Nantucket,\r\nthat were as great, and greater than your Cook and your Krusenstern.\r\nFor in their succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish\r\nsharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands,\r\nbattled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines\r\nand muskets would not willingly have dared. All that is made such a\r\nflourish of in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the\r\nlife-time commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers. Often, adventures\r\nwhich Vancouver dedicates three chapters to, these men accounted\r\nunworthy of being set down in the ship’s common log. Ah, the world! Oh,\r\nthe world!\r\n\r\nUntil the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce but colonial,\r\nscarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between Europe\r\nand the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific\r\ncoast. It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy\r\nof the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted,\r\nit might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated\r\nthe liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain,\r\nand the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts.\r\n\r\nThat great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was\r\ngiven to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first\r\nblunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned\r\nthose shores as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched\r\nthere. The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony.\r\nMoreover, in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the\r\nemigrants were several times saved from starvation by the benevolent\r\nbiscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters.\r\nThe uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do\r\ncommercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the\r\nmissionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive\r\nmissionaries to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land,\r\nJapan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom\r\nthe credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84E5QTCH1DXXJAMQAJ8E","peer_label":"24","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84E5QTCH1DXXJAMQAJ8E","peer_label":"24","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"novel","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR0H0Q791Y1SMZWEQ09FGV","peer_label":"Moby Dick","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KFNR871QM39RQKNZCFSTCRGJ","peer_label":"Chunk 2","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"},{"peer":"01KFNR86RYNCWDN4XZFRKDDE0M","peer_label":"Chunk 0","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:02.556Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:15.127Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}