A few years ago—never mind exactly how many—I found myself with very little money and nothing on land that I particularly wanted to do. Whenever that happens, I usually think about going to sea.
There is something about the ocean that clears my mind and lifts my spirits.
Whenever I start feeling depressed, irritated, or restless, I know it is time to leave. If I find myself staring at funeral processions or passing places where coffins are sold, I take it as another warning.
And when my mood becomes so dark that I have to fight the urge to walk into the street and start knocking people’s hats off for no reason, I know there is only one cure.
I need to get to sea.
For me, the ocean is a substitute for a pistol.
Cato might have ended his troubles by falling on his sword. I prefer to quietly board a ship.
There is really nothing strange about this. If people were honest with themselves, I think almost everyone feels some mysterious attraction to the sea from time to time.
Take Manhattan, for example.
The city is surrounded by water and crowded with piers, docks, and ships. Wherever you walk downtown, the streets seem to lead toward the harbor.
Go down to the Battery on a Sunday afternoon and look around.
You will see enormous crowds of people standing along the waterfront, staring out at the sea.
Some lean against the wooden pilings. Others sit at the ends of the piers. Some watch the ships arriving from China. Others climb high into the rigging just to get a better view of the water.
And most of these people aren’t sailors at all.
During the week, they are ordinary workers trapped inside shops, offices, warehouses, and workshops. They spend their days sitting behind desks or counters.
So why do they come here?
What are they looking for?
More people keep arriving.
They walk straight toward the water as though they intend to jump in.
Standing near the warehouses isn’t enough for them. They want to get as close to the sea as possible without actually falling into it.
There are thousands of them.
They come from every direction—from narrow streets, alleys, avenues, and neighborhoods throughout the city.
Yet somehow they all end up in the same place.
Why?
Is there some invisible force drawing them toward the ocean, like the magnetic pull of a compass?
The same thing happens in the countryside.
Suppose you are walking through a beautiful region filled with lakes and streams. You can choose almost any path, and sooner or later it will probably lead downhill to a pool of water.
There seems to be some kind of magic in it.
Even the most absent-minded person, lost in his own thoughts, can be placed on a path and somehow end up beside water if there is any nearby.
If you ever find yourself dying of thirst in the middle of the American desert, perhaps you should test this theory—especially if your caravan happens to contain a professor of philosophy.
People seem naturally drawn toward water.
Meditation and water have always been connected.
Think of a painter trying to create the most peaceful and dreamy landscape imaginable.
He might paint tall trees, quiet meadows, sleeping cattle, a small cottage with smoke rising lazily from its chimney, and distant mountains fading into blue.
But none of it would feel complete without water.
The painter could fill the scene with beauty, but the picture would still seem empty unless the shepherd in the painting were looking toward a stream.
Go to the American prairies in June. You can walk for miles through fields covered with beautiful flowers.
Yet something is missing.
Water.
There isn’t a drop.
Imagine Niagara Falls without water—nothing but a giant cliff of sand.
Would anyone travel a thousand miles just to see it?
I don’t think so.
Consider the poor poet from Tennessee who suddenly received a little money. He needed a new coat badly, but he still had to decide whether to spend the money on the coat or use it to travel all the way to Rockaway Beach.
Why would he even consider such a thing?
Why does almost every healthy young boy, at some point in his life, become obsessed with the idea of going to sea?
And why does a person feel such a strange excitement the first time his ship sails beyond the sight of land?
The feeling is ancient.
The Persians considered the sea sacred.
The Greeks gave the sea its own god, a brother of Zeus.
Surely there is some meaning behind all of this.
Think about the story of Narcissus.
He saw his own reflection in a pool of water. He became so fascinated by the image that he reached for it, fell into the water, and drowned.
Perhaps that story means more than it first appears to.
We see our own reflection in rivers and oceans.
But what we are really seeing is something we can never quite grasp—the mysterious, unreachable image of life itself.
That, I think, is the secret.
Now, when I say that I go to sea whenever I become depressed or start feeling trapped inside my own head, don’t imagine me buying a ticket and traveling as a passenger.
I don’t have the money for that.
Passengers need money, and having a purse is useless when there is nothing inside it.
Besides, passengers usually get seasick. They become uncomfortable, irritable, and unable to sleep properly.
That isn’t my idea of a good voyage.
I don’t go to sea as a passenger.
I don’t go as a captain, either.
I certainly don’t want to be a commodore or some other important officer.
I have no interest in carrying the responsibility that comes with commanding a ship.
I don’t even want to be the cook.
I’ll admit that being a ship’s cook has a certain amount of prestige. But I have never been particularly interested in standing over a stove and roasting chickens.
That said, once a chicken has been properly roasted, generously buttered, and seasoned with just the right amount of salt and pepper, I become one of its greatest admirers.
The ancient Egyptians clearly understood this. They worshipped roasted birds and animals so much that they even preserved some of them as mummies.
No.
When I go to sea, I go as an ordinary sailor.
I work before the mast and sleep down in the forecastle. If necessary, I climb all the way up to the highest masthead.
Of course, the officers order me around.
They make me jump from one part of the ship to another like a grasshopper in a summer field.
At first, I don’t enjoy it.
It can be especially humiliating if you come from a respectable family and are used to being treated with some dignity.
It is even worse if, just before becoming a sailor, you were a schoolmaster.
Imagine spending your days commanding the tallest boys in your classroom, only to find yourself aboard a ship being ordered to scrub the deck.
That’s quite a change.
You need a little philosophy to accept it without losing your temper.
But eventually, you get used to it.
Suppose some grumpy old sea captain tells me to grab a broom and sweep the deck.
So what?
Is that really such a terrible humiliation?
Would the angel Gabriel think less of me because I obeyed the captain?
Of course not.
Who isn’t a servant of someone or something?
Everyone is.
A captain orders his sailors around. The sailors obey him. But the captain himself is also subject to other forces—money, society, fate, nature, and countless other things.
Everyone gets pushed around in one way or another.
So I might as well accept it.
And perhaps we should all be willing to help one another endure the blows of life.
There is another reason I prefer being a sailor.
They pay me.
Passengers have to pay for their journey. Sailors actually receive money for their work.
There is a huge difference between paying someone and being paid.
Paying money is one of life’s great annoyances.
Receiving it is another matter entirely.
People may say that money is the root of all evil and that the rich will have trouble entering heaven.
Yet when someone hands us money, we accept it with remarkable enthusiasm.
Apparently, we’re perfectly happy to risk eternal damnation if the price is right.
And finally, I like being a sailor because of the exercise and fresh air.
The forecastle is a healthier place than many people realize.
The officers on the quarterdeck may think they are enjoying the best air on the ship, but most of the time they are breathing air that has already passed through the lower decks.
The same thing happens in society.
Ordinary people often influence their leaders far more than those leaders realize.
But then comes the question: why did I decide to go whaling?
I had already spent plenty of time at sea as a merchant sailor.
Why suddenly choose a dangerous whaling voyage?
Perhaps Fate could answer that question better than I could.
Some invisible force seems to follow each of us, quietly guiding our decisions without our realizing it.
Looking back, I suppose my whaling voyage was simply one small part of some enormous plan.
It was like a short performance placed between two much larger ones.
If Fate had written a program for the events of my time, perhaps it would have looked something like this:
“Grand Presidential Election in the United States.”
“Whaling Voyage by One Ishmael.”
“Bloody Battle in Afghanistan.”
I have never understood why Fate assigned me such a small and shabby role while other people were given glorious parts in great tragedies, elegant roles in comedies, or cheerful parts in ridiculous farces.
Still, when I look back now, I can see that I was influenced by many things.
Those forces appeared in different disguises and slowly pushed me toward the sea.
They made me believe that going whaling was entirely my own decision.
But perhaps it wasn’t.
The greatest influence of all was the whale itself.
The idea of that enormous creature fascinated me.
There was something mysterious and almost terrifying about such a huge animal living in the ocean.
Then there were the remote seas where it traveled, carrying its enormous body through waters few people ever saw.
There were dangers no one could properly describe.
There were strange landscapes, unfamiliar sounds, and countless adventures waiting somewhere beyond the horizon.
All of these things drew me in.
I have always had an uncontrollable desire to see distant places.
I want to sail into forbidden waters.
I want to stand on shores where few civilized people have ever set foot.
I don’t pretend that everything unfamiliar is beautiful.
I can recognize horror just as easily as I recognize beauty.
But even horror interests me.
If I am forced to live somewhere, I would rather understand the strange creatures around me than fear them.
And so the whaling voyage seemed perfect.
It felt as if enormous doors had suddenly opened into a world of wonders.
My imagination began filling with visions of whales.
They appeared everywhere in my thoughts, one after another, stretching endlessly into the distance.
And among them all, there was one enormous figure that stood above the rest—a mysterious, shadowy shape, rising through the ocean like a snow-covered mountain floating in the air.