{"id":"01KJNXJQW6H93P0126QQ2N1VEB","cid":"bafkreiajb34svel7jrxfhlurlj67rqdyx77s7vaptoeaebezwy53znt77u","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":264326,"char_start":256461,"chunk_index":36,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1967,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"whale-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\nBut if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no\r\næsthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to\r\nshiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet\r\nevery time.\r\n\r\nThe whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you\r\nwill say.\r\n\r\n_The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler?_ Who\r\nwrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who\r\ncomposed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a\r\nprince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down\r\nthe words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And\r\nwho pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!\r\n\r\nTrue enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no\r\ngood blood in their veins.\r\n\r\n_No good blood in their veins?_ They have something better than royal\r\nblood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel;\r\nafterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of\r\nNantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and\r\nharpooneers—all kith and kin to noble Benjamin—this day darting the\r\nbarbed iron from one side of the world to the other.\r\n\r\nGood again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not\r\nrespectable.\r\n\r\n_Whaling not respectable?_ Whaling is imperial! By old English\r\nstatutory law, the whale is declared “a royal fish.” *\r\n\r\nOh, that’s only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any\r\ngrand imposing way.\r\n\r\n_The whale never figured in any grand imposing way?_ In one of the\r\nmighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the world’s\r\ncapital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian\r\ncoast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession.*\r\n\r\n*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.\r\n\r\nGrant it, since you cite it; but, say what you will, there is no real\r\ndignity in whaling.\r\n\r\n_No dignity in whaling?_ The dignity of our calling the very heavens\r\nattest. Cetus is a constellation in the South! No more! Drive down your\r\nhat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No more! I\r\nknow a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty\r\nwhales. I account that man more honorable than that great captain of\r\nantiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.\r\n\r\nAnd, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet\r\nundiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute\r\nin that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably\r\nambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a\r\nman might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death,\r\nmy executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in\r\nmy desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory\r\nto whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 25. Postscript.\r\n\r\nIn behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but\r\nsubstantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who\r\nshould wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell\r\neloquently upon his cause—such an advocate, would he not be\r\nblameworthy?\r\n\r\nIt is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even\r\nmodern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their\r\nfunctions is gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called,\r\nand there may be a castor of state. How they use the salt,\r\nprecisely—who knows? Certain I am, however, that a king’s head is\r\nsolemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be,\r\nthough, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run\r\nwell, as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here,\r\nconcerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in\r\ncommon life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints\r\nhis hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man\r\nwho uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a\r\nquoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can’t amount to\r\nmuch in his totality.\r\n\r\nBut the only thing to be considered here, is this—what kind of oil is\r\nused at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar\r\noil, nor castor oil, nor bear’s oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil.\r\nWhat then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured,\r\nunpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?\r\n\r\nThink of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and\r\nqueens with coronation stuff!\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires.\r\n\r\nThe chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a\r\nQuaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an\r\nicy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being\r\nhard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood\r\nwould not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time\r\nof general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which\r\nhis state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those\r\nsummers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his\r\nthinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties\r\nand cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was\r\nmerely the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-looking;\r\nquite the contrary."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.654Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.654Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}