Queequeg and I were now fully committed to the whaling business. But I knew that many people on land looked down on whaling. They thought it was dirty, violent, and hardly a respectable profession.
So I want to defend us whalemen.
Imagine introducing a harpooner at some elegant gathering in a great city. Would anyone be impressed?
Probably not.
If you even put “S.W.F.” for “Sperm Whale Fishery” on your calling card, people would probably think you were showing off.
One reason people look down on whaling is simple: they think it is nothing more than butchering whales.
Well, yes, we do kill whales. But soldiers kill people in war, and society honors them as heroes.
If people can admire soldiers who fight bloody battles, why should they despise whalemen because our work is bloody too?
And people say our ships are filthy.
Perhaps they are sometimes dirty. But compare a slippery whale-ship deck with the terrible, blood-soaked battlefields where soldiers are praised as heroes.
And if danger is what makes a profession honorable, then whaling has more than enough danger.
A soldier might bravely walk toward enemy guns, but I doubt many soldiers would calmly stand beneath the enormous tail of a sperm whale as it crashes through the air above them.
Human dangers are frightening enough.
But the dangers and wonders of the sea are on an entirely different scale.
Still, there is something even more amusing about the world’s attitude toward whalemen.
People claim they have no respect for us.
Yet almost every lamp, candle, and oil flame burning around the world owes something to our work.
Those lights are almost like countless little temples built in our honor.
And look at what whaling has accomplished.
The Dutch once appointed admirals to command their whaling fleets.
King Louis XVI of France personally paid to send whaling ships from Dunkirk to sea, and even invited families from Nantucket to settle there.
Britain once paid more than a million pounds in government rewards to its whalemen.
And America eventually built the greatest whaling fleet in the world.
Hundreds of ships sailed under the American flag, carrying thousands of men and consuming millions of dollars every year.
Their ships were worth tens of millions of dollars, and they brought millions of dollars’ worth of products back into American ports.
So tell me again that there is nothing powerful or important about whaling.
And that is only the beginning.
For decades, whaling ships had been exploring parts of the world that almost nobody else knew.
They sailed into distant seas and islands that had never been properly mapped.
Before famous explorers became celebrated, anonymous whaling captains from Nantucket had already ventured into dangerous waters.
They often faced unknown islands, strange peoples, violent seas, and dangers that professional explorers might never have dared to face.
Some explorers could spend entire chapters describing an adventure.
A Nantucket whaling captain might experience something equally remarkable and simply leave it out of the ship’s log because it seemed too ordinary to mention.
That was the kind of life these men lived.
Think about the Pacific coast of South America.
Before whaling ships began rounding Cape Horn, there was very little trade between Europe and the Spanish colonies along that coast.
Whalemen were among the first people to break through Spain’s strict control of those colonies.
Their voyages helped open those distant lands to the outside world.
In time, the connections created by such voyages contributed to the movements that eventually freed Peru, Chile, and Bolivia from Spanish rule.
And then there was Australia.
After the Dutch first stumbled upon it, most ships avoided its shores because they considered the place wild and dangerous.
But whaling ships went there.
They were among the ships that regularly visited those shores and helped establish the connections that allowed Australia to grow.
In the early days of the Australian settlement, whaling ships even helped save struggling settlers from starvation by bringing food when it was desperately needed.
The same thing happened throughout the islands of Polynesia.
Whaling ships opened routes for merchants and missionaries.
In some places, they even carried the first missionaries to their destinations.
And Japan?
For centuries, Japan kept itself almost completely closed to outsiders.
If Japan ever opens its doors to the wider world, the whaling ships will deserve some of the credit.
They were already waiting at Japan’s doorstep.
So if you still want to tell me that whaling has nothing noble or inspiring about it, then I am ready to argue with you all day.
Perhaps you will say:
“The whale has no famous writer, and whaling has no famous historian.”
No famous writer?
Who wrote one of the earliest great descriptions of the enormous whale?
Job.
And who recorded one of the earliest known accounts of a whaling voyage?
King Alfred the Great.
He wrote down the story told by Ohthere, a Norwegian who hunted whales.
And who once gave a powerful speech praising the whaling industry in Parliament?
Edmund Burke.
So much for saying that nobody important ever wrote about us.
Perhaps you will try another argument.
“You whalemen are ordinary men. You have no noble blood in your veins.”
No noble blood?
We have something better.
Benjamin Franklin himself was descended from the Folger family of Nantucket, a family connected with generations of island settlers and harpooners.
Some of those whalemen were his own relatives.
So if you want to insult whalemen as lowborn men, remember that some of their blood runs through the family of Benjamin Franklin.
Perhaps you will say:
“Fine. But everyone knows whaling is still not respectable.”
Not respectable?
Whaling is practically imperial.
Old English law actually called the whale a “royal fish.”
You might say:
“That is only a legal title. It does not make the whale truly important.”
Really?
The whale once appeared as one of the most impressive objects in a Roman victory procession.
When a Roman general returned triumphantly to Rome, enormous whale bones brought from the Syrian coast were displayed in the procession for everyone to see.
Still not impressive enough?
Then consider the whale itself.
You say there is no dignity in whaling?
Look up at the sky.
Cetus, the great sea creature, is a constellation.
The heavens themselves have given the whale a place among the stars.
So perhaps when you stand before a powerful ruler, you may bow your head.
But when you stand beside Queequeg, perhaps you should show the same respect.
I know a man who has killed three hundred and fifty whales during his lifetime.
To me, that man deserves more honor than an ancient military commander who proudly claimed to have conquered hundreds of fortified cities.
And as for me, I owe whaling more than I can say.
Perhaps there is something worthwhile inside me that I have not discovered yet.
Perhaps one day I will accomplish something that deserves to be remembered.
Perhaps, after I am dead, my executors—or more likely, my creditors—will find some valuable manuscripts in my desk.
If that ever happens, I will give the credit to whaling.
Because the whale-ship was my university.
It was my Yale.
It was my Harvard.