Until the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce but colonial, scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between Europe and the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific coast. It was the whalemen who first broke through the jealous policy of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts.
That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was given to the enlightened world by whaleman. After its first blunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships, long shunned those shores as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched there. The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony. Moreover, in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the emigrants were several times saved from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters. The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do commercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive missionaries to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold.
But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no aesthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet every time.
The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you will say.
The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler? Who wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job? And who composed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!
True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no good blood in their veins.
No good blood in their veins? They have something better than royal blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel; afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and harpooneers- all kith and kin to noble Benjamin- this day darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.
Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not respectable.
Whaling not respectable? Whaling is imperial! By old English statutory law, the whale is declared "a royal fish."
Oh, that's only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any grand imposing way.
The whale never figured in any grand imposing way? In one of the mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the world's capital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian coast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession.*
*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.
Grant it, since you cite it; but say what you will, there is no real dignity in whaling.
No dignity in whaling? The dignity of our calling the very heavens attest. Cetus is a constellation in the south! No more! Drive down your hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No more! I know a man that, in his lifetime has taken three hundred and fifty whales. I account that man more honorable than that great captain of antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.
And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
Thus and thus, Ishmael concludes his defense of the whaling profession. He throws everything into these paragraphs--Job and the Bible, Benjamin Franklin, famine in Australia, and Edmund Burke. It's quite the display of name-dropping. All to prove the nobility of whalers. Of course, Ishmael doesn't really have knowledge of the dangers of colonialism that accompanies whaling expeditions--good, Christian white men sailing into "savage" ports to deal with the natives. That knowledge has come with time and a great deal of literary and cultural criticism. No, Ishmael is just laying the foundation for the narrative to follow.To paraphrase Queen Gertrude in Hamlet, though, Ishmael doth protest too much. Of course, Donald Trump does the same thing every day. He touts all of his "successes," started doing this the day of his inauguration, proclaiming the crowds in the streets of Washington, D. C., to be the largest crowds ever for the swearing in of a President of the United States. Never mind that the verifiable facts conflict greatly with Mr. Trump's assertions.
I don't trust people who make such sweeping and broad claims about anything. I grew up questioning authority. There's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't make me a communist or a radical or an atheist. I just don't believe in following anything blindly. It's dangerous.
Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Wait a minute. Isn't Saint Marty a devout Catholic?"
Yes, I am. However, that doesn't mean that I simply check my brain at the door when I enter church. On the contrary, I find myself more intellectually engaged during Mass. I question. Debate with myself and the Gospel writers. I spar with doubt and fear. For me, that's what being a good Christian is all about: the struggle.
These last few days, I've been struggling quite a bit. It may have something to do with the fact that I haven't fully recovered from doing the radio show in Calumet last weekend. AND the time change. AND some familial struggles that involve a great deal of emotional upheaval for someone I love. I've been questioning God a lot this week. The line of my inquiry isn't very sophisticated. It goes something like this: "WTF, God?!!?"
Now, sitting in my office at the university after teaching, I find myself really weary. Already thinking about going to bed tonight. Dreading work tomorrow, which is going to be insanely busy. I'm ready for the weekend to begin.
Saint Marty is thankful this evening for . . . Oh, hell. Fill in the blank.
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