33 The Specksynder
CHAPTER 33
THE SPECKSYNDER.Specksynder: Melville's misspelling of "Specksnyder" comes from Scoresby, his source for the information in this chapter.
Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board, arising from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a class unknown of course in any other marine than the whale-fleet.
The large importance attached to the harpooneer’s vocation is evinced by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries and more ago, the command of a whale ship was not wholly lodged in the person now called the captain, but was divided between him and an officer called the Specksynder. Literally this word means Fat-Cutter; usage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer. In those days, the captain’s authority was restricted to the navigation and general management of the vessel: while over the whale-hunting department and all its concerns, the Specksynder or Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still retained, but his former dignity is sadly abridged. At present he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the captain’s more inferior subalternssubalterns: subordinates.. Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct of the harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely depends, and since in the American Fishery he is not only an important officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances (night watches on a whaling ground) the command of the ship’s deck is also his; therefore the grand political maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live apart from the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as their professional superior; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as their social equal.
Now, the grand distinctionREVISION NARRATIVE: the grand distinction // Class sensitivities may be at play in the British change to “one of the grand distinctions.” That is, from the perspective of British readers, many distinctions divide ruling from working classes. Ishmael's reduction of them to one "grand distinction"—and that having merely to do with one's placement on board a ship—might be taken as presumptuous; it is yet another of Ishmael's satiric jabs at aristocracy. That said, Melville might have made the change himself for similar class reasons or some other reason regarding nautical practice. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin. drawn between officer and man at sea, is this—the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in the captain’s cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it.
Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the longest of all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils of it, and the community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom, high or low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their common luck, together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and hard work; though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind how much like an old Mesopotamian familyan old Mesopotamian family: referring to the ancient patriarchy of the Middle East. these whalemen may, in some primitive instances, live together; for all that, the punctilious externalspunctilious externals: precise formalities., at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost as much outward homage as if he wore the imperial purpleimperial purple: color of a Roman emperor’s toga., and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth.
And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only homage he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though he required no man to remove the shoes from his feethe required no man to remove the shoes from his feet: Implying that Ahab did not take the quarter-deck to be sacred. In Exodus 3:5 (echoed in Acts 7:33), the voice of God speaks from the burning bush, instructing Moses: “put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." ere stepping upon the quarter-deck; and though there were times when, owing to peculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or in terroremin terrorem: to create fear., or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usagesforms and usages: procedures and customs. of the sea.
Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanismsultanism: absolutism. of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchmentsentrenchments: concealments, as in fortifications., always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true princes of the EmpireEmpire: Holy Roman Empire (800–1806). from the world’s hustingshustings: sites of political campaigning; and leaves the highest honorsREVISION NARRATIVE: highest honors // The British reading, “highest honour,” registers the expected shift to the -our spelling. The further revision to the singular (perhaps by Melville) brings the word in parallel to the singular “Such large virtue” a few lines later. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin. that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the CzarNicholas the Czar: Nicholas I (1796–1855) was absolute ruler of Russia from 1825 until his death., the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direst swingdirest swing: The American version gives “direct swing,” which makes little or no sense; the typo was corrected, either by Melville or an editor, to “direst swing” in the British edition, and that correction is adopted by the editors of the NN Moby-Dick and MEL. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin., ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded to.
But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deepplucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep: Echoing Shakespeare’s Henry the Fourth, Part 1: “To pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon, / Or dive into the bottom of the deep” (1.3.202–203)., and featured in the unbodied air!