‘Moby-Dick’ Was Based on a True Story

A story of two Dicks and adaptations

We’ve learned to be a little leery of things “based on a true story.”

But the tradition is a very old one. As long as things have happened — there have been storytellers to dramatize it.

Herman Melville was like that.

His 1851 doorstop of classic literature, Moby Dick, wasn’t cut from whole cloth.

Melville, like any good teller of fish stories, embellished a little bit.

The White Whale, Moby Dick, was said in the book to be the biggest sperm whale to ever live. Exact wheelbase of this model isn’t given, but it says elsewhere in the book that sperm whales can grow to up to 90 feet — Chapter 103, “Measurement of a Whale’s Skeleton” (27 meters, for you metric system nerds). This is a touch larger than any ever recorded.

The largest such marine mammal recorded was 79 feet long, recorded by the International Whaling Commission.

It wasn’t common for whales to attack ships, but there had been instances. One that likely inspired Melville was the 1820 sinking of the Nantucket whaling ship, the Essex.

The Essex had an…eventful trip to begin with. Two days after departure, they hit a squall that nearly sank her. She’d ended up on beam ends (meaning the ship can’t easily be brought upright again, nearly fully capsizing), lost a topgallant sail and two smaller whaling boats.

Captain Pollard and First Mate Owen Chase pulled the crew together, and brought them southward toward the notoriously brutal waters of Cape Horn.

The waters at the Cape are so difficult to sail in, they’re one trip that’s immortalized in sailor tattoo tradition. The full-rigged tall ship tattoos were meant to symbolize the passage.

They managed, if slowly, to round the Cape, and made it to their hunting grounds.

Some 2,000 miles off the western coast of South America, the Essex found a very large whale, that proceeded to ram the ship, sinking it.

Chase, one of only eight survivors, would write about it in his 1821 book, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex (available from Project Gutenberg in its entirety)

Chase, in his book, shares some traits with the Pequod’s first mate, Ishmael. And Pollard’s steely determination to hunt whales and take on the sperm whale that sank the Essex? Feels a little like Ahab.

But that’s not where the story of the story ends.

Where did the title come from? Moby Dick sounds a little specific, right? And an albino whale?

In the 1830s, there were fish stories floating around among whalers about a very large, very white, whale off the coast of Chile.

American sailor, explorer, and author Jeremiah N. Reynolds wrote a story for The Knickerbocker (the New Yorker of its day) called “The White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a Manuscript Journal,” in 1839. He told the world the dread creature’s name, formerly only spoken of in hushed tones in taverns filled with the saltiest sailing men — Mocha Dick.

The story of Mocha Dick is a sea epic unto itself.

Mocha, like Moby, was incredibly large, an albino sperm whale — and very grumpy and impossible to catch, until 1838. Mocha died at the hands of whalers.

But until then — the whale fought with the kind of bravery the whalers thought of themselves, and earned a kind of respect among them.

Mocha survived (by Reynolds’ account) over 100 battles with whalers. He was known to end naval altercations with a smash from a giant fluke (what the whale’s tail is called). According to Reynolds, in many cases, it would just take one good hit from Mocha’s fluke to annihilate a whaling boat.

The whale was also old — and his head was covered in rock-hard barnacles, giving him extra ramming power and a rugged, monstrous appearance.

This whale was a baddie, y’all.

But despite all that, he was apparently a peaceful whale until provoked. He was spotted numerous times sailing alongside ships. But once attacked, he was a fearsome opponent.

Mocha was a whale that could out think pro harpooners, and would make strategic, ferocious strikes at his attackers.

The 70-foot whale’s naval career would come to an end, when he was attacked and killed responding to a whale cow’s distress from her baby that had been killed by harpooners.

It took 20, long, heavy, harpoons to kill Mocha, who very nearly had one final victory. The whalers almost died too in that final battle with the White Whale of the Pacific.

But the story still doesn’t end there.

A decade later, The Knickerbocker reported a new sighting — this time in the Arctic Ocean. The Knickerbocker concluded the tale: Vive Mocha Dick!

Whether you believe Reynolds’ account, or the eventual retiring of the whale in 1849, it’s hard to dismiss Mocha’s name and take (fluke?) as a coincidence.

Melville would start writing Moby-Dick in 1950, a year after the final sighting of Mocha.

At the end of the novel (spoiler alert from one of the first Great American Novels), Ahab’s Moby sinks the Pequod. Ahab and the crew drown, except one survivor, who goes on to tell the tale:

Owen Cha — I mean, Ishmael.

The novel doesn’t actually say whether Moby, full of harpoons and in a wounded fury, survives.

Though most adaptations show Moby surviving to haunt his waters another day.

It wasn’t Melville’s last words on whales.

Melville remarked on the sinking of the Ann Alexander in 1851, “Ye Gods! What a commentator is this Ann Alexander whale. What he has to say is short & pithy & very much to the point. I wonder if my evil art has raised this monster.”

Melville, in his way, was also one of our first literary nature writers.

He’s remembered for his depictions of sailors and working people. But his depictions of whales in particular shows a kind of admiration for them; an awe and respect.

And that would be a tradition carried on in the nature stories of Jack London in the early 1900s, and even in our documentaries on whales today.

And still, from your favorite salty purveyor of books — infinitely readable. Moby Dick is a classic adventure story.

It just happens to be inspired heavily by real-life adventures.

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