March 13: Ship's Common Log, Fragility of Friendship and Love, Broken Spirit

But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!

But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of scales; see what we whalemen are, and have been.

Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have admirals of their whaling fleets? Why did Louis XVI of France, at his own personal expense, fit out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties upwards of L1,000,000? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of America now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world; sail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth, at the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all this, if there be not something puissant in whaling?

But this is not the half; look again.

I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life, point out one single peaceful influence, which within the last sixty years has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world, taken in one aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way and another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so continuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to catalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many years past the whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cooke or Vancouver had ever sailed. If American and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage harbors, let them fire salutes to the honor and glory of the whale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted between them and the savages. They may celebrate as they will the heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cookes, your Krusensterns; but I say that scores of anonymous Captains have sailed out of Nantucket, that were as great, and greater, than your Cooke and your Krusenstern. For in their succorless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cooke with all his marines and muskets would not have willingly dared. All that is made such a flourish of in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the life-time commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers. Often, adventures which Vancouver dedicates three chapters to, these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the ship's common log. Ah, the world! Oh, the world!

And Ishmael continues his defense of whale hunters.  He credits them for extending civilization, charting the uncharted, lighting the candles in shrines around the world.  Hold on to your hats, he's just getting started.  By the end of this chapter, he has infused whalers with royal blood and practically placed them on a pedestal at the foot of God's throne.

Of course, Ishmael's idealization of whaling and whalers is a conceit.  In the chapters to come, Ishmael and his crew mates and captain are anything but ideal.  Ahab is incredibly flawed--driven and obsessed to the brink of madness.  Idealizing any person or place or institution or relationship is a huge mistake.

I have been reminded today about the fragility of friendship and love.  Whether it's the blush of first love or the steady bloom of a 70-year marriage, a relationship is built upon trust and respect.  If those two things aren't present, it ain't gonna last. 

Don't worry.  There's nothing wrong with my marriage.  My wife and I are fine.  I'm talking about another relationship of a person very close to my heart.  She's hurting a great deal, and I'm a little powerless to do anything about it.  I told her earlier this evening that love is never perfect.  Never ideal.  Love is seeing a person at her/his very worst, and accepting.  Love is making mistakes, and forgiving.  Love is respecting yourself, and being respected in return.

I can't be more specific this evening without possibly hurting or embarrassing someone I love deeply.  If that person happens to stumble across this blog post, I simply want her/him to know that a broken heart is temporary.  A broken spirit is much more permanent.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for all the love in his life.