Alright, we got the big one outta the way, let’s keep moving!

I’ve been feeling energized lately. Maybe it’s just that the weather has cooled down a bit, but my creative juices are flowing again. And this chapter is a great canvas for my, shall we say, creative interpretations of this book.

Summary

Appropos of the gam with the Samuel Enderby, Old Ishmael takes the opportunity to explain the history of whaling in England. They began sending out whaling ships in 1775, a good 50 years after the Nantucketers had begun doing the same. “Samuel Enderby” was the name of one of those original whalers, who founded the firm Enderby & Sons, sending all of his various progeny out into the world to bring back sperm.

A ship from this fleet was the first to discover the whaling grounds of the Pacific Ocean, all previous whaling had been confined to the Atlantic. Another discovered the particular cruising grounds off the coast of Japan, and that ship was actually captained by a Coffin of Nantucket!

So, unlike the French, Ishmael has great respect for the English whalers. They have greatly advanced the development and expansion of the industry, and are always fun to hang out with. He recalls a wonderful gam with that very same Samuel Enderby, many years after the fatal voyage of the Pequod. We are given what amounts to a Yelp review of that British ship, with Ishmael describing the food in detail, and remarking on how they had plenty of flip to pass around (this is an old fashioned cocktail, essentially just some sort of hard liquor mixed with an egg, heated with a piece of red-hot iron, it’s weird.).

Ishmael tells us that the British whalers are all known to be party ships, always stocking plenty of alcohol and taking a very laid-back attitude to their work. This he treats as a historical mystery, and delves into an ancient whaling tome to find answers.

It turns out, it is because the British tradition follows not from the Nantucket tradition of whalers, but rather from the tradition of the Danes, the Hollanders, and the Zealanders (not New Zealand, the old one). This old book that Ishmael has found doesn’t have much to say about the particulars of those hunts, but does recount all the supplies with the fleet took on in their short, summertime voyagers searching for fat on the high seas.

These northern whalers… they brought plenty to drink. And not just water, but several barrels of beer per crew member, as well as gin, and lots and lots of delicious food, much better than most whalers got in the modern fishery. Thus was born the tradition of good time party boats that the British carry forward to that very day!

Analysis

This is a fun chapter, and a nice reminder of Ishmael’s very powerful written voice after the more direct and documentary style of the last chapter. We’re not looking at Ahab’s grim internal battles anymore, we’re just thinking about what fun it is to visit a whaling ship that has a lot of good booze.

Also, this is one of my favorite tricks that Melville pulls, pretty consistently: making a very dry and scholarly subject more engaging to read about. Novels in the 19th century had a very… different style to them, and even writers that I like a lot often fall into bad patterns of exactly recounting a lot of unnecessary details, in a very dry tone. Melville is definitely guilty of that at times, but mostly he gives us things like this:

During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about whalers.

And:

Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in the present case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole pipes, barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and good cheer.

Just little asides and jokes that make it sound more like a person is telling you this story and trying to make it a little less boring. I always appreciate it, as I have struggled through many a book where that care was not taken.

Cultural Divide

So, what are we to glean from this academic discussion of the nature of British whaling?

Well, I take it as Ishmael basically doing what I avoided doing last chapter: using the meeting of Ahab and Boomer as a sort of metaphor for Americans and Brits generally. But, instead of taking it as a metaphor for the nations, takes it as a metaphor for the cultures from whence they come. We’ve seen what American whalers are like, arising as they do from the stern, sober folk of New England. But that is not the only whaling tradition that exists, and so it is not the only whaling culture that exists.

It’s always fascinating to look at different cultures and traditions that arise out of people doing extremely similar work in similar circumstances, but grown out of different soil, so to speak. The Dutch treated whaling voyages as party cruises, because they were short and intense. You could only do it in the summer months in the northern seas, so you had to make the best of it. And conditions were so rough that the only way to motivate people was to ply them with booze.

However, one may also imagine that it had something to do with the attitude of the home culture towards alcohol. The flavor of protestantism that found purchase on those sandy beaches of Nantucket were not particularly fond of it, shall we say, while the Dutch, like most other Northern Europeans, were.

Of course, Ishmael merely averrs that it was a difference in weather. The cold climes of the Northern seas allowed harpooneers to still do their jobs while drunk, whereas in the South it would put them out of commission entirely.

The Fat Machine

The book that Ishmael reads is a kind of record of old business transactions. The kind of thing that people would study to wrap their heads around an industry, to understand its workings. Generally very dry, but still the main thing that businesspeople the world over still concern themselves with: what do you put in vs what do you get out?

You have this fleet of ships and you load it up with men and booze and food, all costing a certain amount, and you weigh that against the bounty of fat and sperm they bring home. These simple, dry calculations are the engine of commerce.

However, over the centuries, as these calculations have grown more complex, you start to see odd things. We no longer live in a world where merely “making a lot of money” is enough, as a goal. No, one must demonstrate growth, and one must please the particular class that drives the economy from the top. It’s all about attracting investors, and then pleasing their whims. You can forgo profits entirely as long as you’re charismatic enough!

Indeed, one need only look at the recent strike action by the WGA (East and West) to see this dynamic in action. The studios lose billions of dollars immediately, and cripple their ability to earn in the near future. But it’s not about money, it’s about control. It’s not enough just to make things! One must be allowed to have complete control to run things how one wants. Anything less in unacceptable.

Ah… the simple mercantilism of the 19th century is so quaint, in retrospect. The modern capitalism of America and Europe is far closer to a command economy of Soviet nightmares than to the free-for-all of those days.

Crew and Captain

Let’s take, by way of analogy, the mutinous crew we saw some chapters ago in this very book, and juxtapose it with the ongoing writers strike.

The captain of a crew is in direct, mortal peril if he cannot maintain control over his crew. However, his crew is limited in size, and the dynamics between the various factions and individual members is easier to pay attention to. If there is a breakdown, everyone suffers, so there is an incentive to keep things moving smoothly.

For the WGA, on the other hand, they are not even negotiation with the studios directly. Rather, a sort of intermediary organization, the AMPTP, has been placed in charge of all dealings with the union. The studios are following the tactics of their employees! Trying to gain power through solidarity. Any one cannot simply make a deal, they must all hang together.

You see, it is also about responsibility. A captain is responsible for their crew, but corporations do not wish to have any responsibility at all for their workers. They’d have us all working as disavowed assets, paid only for the precise services that are required and then no further. Free to be tossed out at a moments notice, so that they hold as much power as possible over the conditions under which work is done, and what that work even is.

A corporation is a black hole of responsibility. It has the right to speak, but it cannot be held accountable for its crimes, and indeed shelters though under its aegis from such repercussions. It’s just business! It’s the economy! It’s the way things are done!

Anything but my decision. The dream of a perfect victim, once more.

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Kinda didn’t know where I was heading with it, in that metaphor, but I think I got into something interesting. It’s such a fun exercise, just letting my mind wander as I write these. I never edit, you know, except to fix typos. If I don’t like how something is coming together, I just toss the whole thing.

Until next time, shipmates!