35 The Mast-Head
CHAPTER 35
THE MAST-HEAD.
It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the other seamen my first mast-headmy first mast-head: Ishmael’s first turn to stand lookout at the top of one of the masts, within a barrel hoop attached there for a railing. Compare the opening of Ch. 19 of White-Jacket. Macy, Scoresby, J. Ross Browne, and Melville's personal experience are sources for this chapter. came round.
In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost simultaneously with the vessel’s leaving her port; even though she may have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising groundcruising ground: an area of the sea where, expecting to find whales, a whaler will slowly sail back and forth.. And if, after a three, four, or five years’ voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her—say, an empty vial even—then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not till her skysail-polesskysail-poles: highest parts of masts, supporting the highest yards and sails (skysails), and added only under fine sailing conditions. sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.
Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here. I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them. For though their progenitors, the builders of BabelBabel: The Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.1—and traditionally placed in what is present-day Iraq—was intended to reach heaven but was brought down by God. As in biblical illustrations showing the fall of the tower, with people plunging through the air, this chapter ends with the image of a falling masthead-stander., must doubtless, by their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final truckfinal truck: A truck is a small circle of wood topping a mast—metaphorically, the finishing piece. was put to it) as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the boardgone by the board: Generally in reference to an object (not person) that has fallen overboard, but here it means “collapsed.”, in the dread gale of God’s wrath; therefore, we cannot give these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general belief among archæologists, that the first pyramidspyramids: The best-known Egyptian pyramids (at Giza, near Cairo) were originally smooth-faced, and their “steps” are at least five feet high. Melville did not visit the pyramids until his 1857 trip to the Holy Land; however, the image recurs throughout Moby-Dick and later writings. In particular, Moby Dick’s hump is like a pyramid, and Stubb dreams in Ch. 31 of futilely kicking at a pyramid.
were founded for astronomical purposes: a theory singularly supported by the peculiar stair-like formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the look-outs of a modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight. In Saint StylitesSaint Stylites: Fifth-century Syrian hermit St. Simeon Stylites lived at the top of a pillar (stylite) for forty years; as Ishmael quips, he died “at his post.”, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven from his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing everything out to the last, literally died at his post. Of modern standers-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron, and bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale, are still entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon discovering any strange sight. There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of the column of VendomeNapoleon . . . Vendome: Melville saw the column and statue of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) in the Place Vendôme, Paris, in 1849., stands with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the air; careless, now, who rules the decks below; whether Louis Philippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis the DevilLouis Philippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil: REVISION NARRATIVE: The three are, in order, king of France (who reigned 1830–1848); nineteenth-century French socialist politician and journalist (1811–1882); and Ishmael’s satirical name for French president Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1808–1873), later Emperor Napoleon III. A British editor toned down Melville’s satirizing by revising "Louis the devil" to “Louis Napoleon.” Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon’s controversial nephew, had become president of the Republic of France in 1848 and was making moves to establish himself as emperor at the time Melville was completing Moby-Dick. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin.. Great Washington, too, stands high aloft on his towering main-mast in BaltimoreWashington ... in Baltimore: A statue of George Washington stands atop a column in Baltimore erected in 1829, which Melville likens to one of the “Pillars of Hercules.”, and like one of Hercules’ pillarsHercules' pillars: These two promontories, in Spain and Morocco, are visible from the Strait of Gibraltar, which connects the Mediterranean and Atlantic and was, in ancient lore, the western boundary "beyond which few mortals [would] go.", his column marks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go. Admiral NelsonAdmiral Nelson: On his 1849 trip to England and the continent, Melville viewed the statue of Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson on its 185-foot column in London’s Trafalgar Square, the base of which—like Ishmael's "capstan of gun-metal"—is decorated with bronze scenes cast from captured cannons., also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his mast-head in Trafalgar Square; and ever when most obscured by that London smoke, token is yet given that a hidden hero is there; for where there is smoke, must be fire. But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly invoked to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze; however, it may be surmised, that their spirits penetrate through the thick haze of the future, and descry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned.
It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head standers of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is not so, is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed MacyREVISION NARRATIVE // Obed Macy: Despite or perhaps because Melville did not visit Nantucket until 1852, he relied, in his writing of Moby-Dick, on Macy's 1835 The History of Nantucket for facts about the island community. The following anecdote concerning the sighting of whales from shore is a paraphrase of Macy’s description: “To enable them to discover whales at a considerable distance from the land, a large spar was erected, and cleats fixed to them, by which the whalemen could climb to the top, and there keep a good look out for their game” (Macy, 31, our emphasis). In his adaptive revision of Macy, Melville retains key terms — spar, erected, cleats, game — but adds a comic chicken roost comparison, as he builds his more serious treatment of mastheads and the wandering minds of the whale watchers who perch in them. Melville may have drawn the anecdote directly from a copy of Macy’s History, but not from the copy that survives, as that item was a gift, from Thomas Macy, given to him on Nantucket in 1852, several months after the completion of Moby-Dick (Sealts 345). A more likely source for this anecdote and the one found in Melville’s Macy extract is J. Ross Browne’s 1846 Etchings of a Whaling Cruise (Sealts 88), which quotes both anecdotes in its “Appendix” (see “Extracts”)., the sole historian of Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells us, that in the early times of the whale fishery, ere ships were regularly launched in pursuit of the game, the people of that island erected lofty spars along the sea-coast, to which the look-outs ascended by means of nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house. A few years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New ZealandBay whalemen of New Zealand: New Zealand had several bay-whaling stations, where whales killed close to shore were processed., who, upon descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-manned boats nigh the beach. But this custom has now become obsolete; turn we then to the one proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads are kept manned from sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other every two hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant—the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old RhodesColossus at old Rhodes: huge bronze statue of the sun god Helios, the legs of which allegedly spanned the harbor entrance on the Greek island of Rhodes.. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extrasgazettes; extras: newspapers; special editions providing late-breaking news. with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner—for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.
In one of those southern whalemen, on a long three or four years’ voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the mast-head would amount to several entire months. And it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your most usual point of perch is the head of the t’ gallant-mastt’ gallant-mast . . . t’ gallant cross-trees: third section of the mast; cross-trees: light, horizontal timbers., where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t’ gallant cross-trees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about as cosy as he would standing on a bull’s horns. To be sure, in coldREVISION NARRATIVE: in cold weather: Probably it was Melville, not an editor, who revised “cold” to “coolish” in the British edition. The editors of the NN Moby-Dick also revise to “coolish”; however, MEL makes no change. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin. weather you may carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of a watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more of a house than the unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshly tabernaclefleshly tabernacle: For this sense of tabernacle, see 2 Peter 1.13–14. As 1 Corinthians 6.19 explains, “your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you.”, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move out of it, without running great risk of perishing (like an ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a watch-coat is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional skin encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in your body, and no more can you make a convenient closet of your watch-coat.
Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of a southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents or pulpits, called crow’s-nests, in which the look-outs of a Greenland whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In the fire-side narrative of Captain SleetCaptain Sleet: One of Melville’s nicknames for William Scoresby, Jr. (1789-1857), son of the highly successful Arctic whaleman William Scoresby, Sr., and author of one of Melville’s principal whaling sources, An Account of the Arctic Regions with a History and Description of the Northern Whale-Fishery (1820).William Junior began serving under his father at age ten, and his Account of the Greenland or right whale “fishery” combines scientific detail, industry practice, and personal experience, which sometimes included his father William Senior’s exploits. William Junior’s “fireside narrative,” as Melville facetiously puts it, is thorough in detail and learned perhaps to a fault. Ishmael’s faux title for Scoresby’s book, with its “incidental” rambling on “Lost Icelandic Colonies,” refers to Scoresby’s digression on the same topic in Vol. 1, ch. 4, Sect. 5, p. 263.
Melville’s comic paraphrase of Scoresby’s description of his father’s crow’s-nest invention (vol. 2, ch. 4, 202-205) is not a parody, satire, or mockery (as Vincent urges, 130-135) but a good-humored, tongue-in-cheek tweaking of Scoresby’s over-attention to what is irrelevant or “charmingly circumstantial.” (See, for instance, “Arctic snow crystals” in Ch. 56.) Melville integrates direct quotes — “summit of the mast” and “resistance of the water” — into his paraphrase, which has Junior claiming his father’s invention as his own. Melville cannot resist adding amenities to the Scoresby invention by turning the top mast shelter for freezing lookouts into a cozy gentleman’s resort, equipped with umbrellas and a hip flask for warming the inner self. Equally amusing is the image of Scoresby “popping off” a few narwhals from his high perch in reference to Scoresby’s more solemn recording of the practice in a footnote. Humor aside, Melville maintains his “love [for] the brave, the honest, and learned Captain.” For Melville’s comic nicknames, see “Fogo Von Slack” (Ch. 92) and “Dr. Snodhead” (Ch. 102). For Scoresby as a source, see the entry for him in “Extracts.” See also additional citations in Chs. 32, 41, 55, 56, and 103., entitled “A Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;” in this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented crow’s-nest of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet’s good craft. He called it the Sleet’s crow’s-nest, in honor of himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children after our own names (we fathers being the original inventors and patentees), so likewise should we denominate after ourselves any other apparatus we may beget. In shape, the Sleet’s crow’s-nest is something like a large tierce or pipetierce or pipe: 40- and 120-gallon wine casks, respectively.; it is open above, however, where it is furnished with a movable side-screen to keep to windward of your head in a hard gale. Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a little trap-hatch in the bottom. On the after side, or side next the stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, in which to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this crow’s nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down upon them is a very different thing. Now, it was plainly a labor of love for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little detailed conveniences of his crow’s-nest; but though he so enlarges upon many of these, and though he treats us to a very scientific account of his experiments in this crow’s-nest, with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of counter-acting the errors resulting from what is called the “local attraction” of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship’s planks, and in the Glacier’s case, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though the Captain is very discreet and scientific here, yet, for all his learned “binnacle deviations,” “azimuth compass observations,” and “approximate errors,”“binnacle deviations,” . . . “approximate errors,”: problems and complex methods of correction related to compass inaccuracies. he knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was not so much immersed in those profound magnetic meditations, as to fail being attracted occasionally towards that well replenished little case-bottlecase-bottle: small, square flask., so nicely tucked in on one side of his crow’s nest, within easy reach of his hand. Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and even love the brave, the honest, and learned Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird’s nest within three or four perches of the poleperches of the pole: a perch (also called a pole) is 5.5 yards, but perches are also birds’ resting places; hence a triple pun..
But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenland-men were; yet that disadvantage is greatly counterbalanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we Southern fishers mostly float. For one, I used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find there; then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg over the top-sail yardtop-sail yard: long, heavy pole, crossing the mast, from which the topsail is hung., take a preliminary view of the watery pastures, and so at last mount to my ultimate destination.
Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I—being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude,—how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale-ships’ standing orders, “Keep your weather eye open, and sing outweather eye open . . . sing out: be on guard; shout out. every time.”
And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eyelean brow and hollow eye: this parody of a romantic and melancholy youth is reminiscent of satirical responses to Ralph Waldo Emerson's description of himself as a "transparent eyeball" in Nature, including Christopher Pearse Cranch's depiction of an eyeball wearing trousers. ; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phædon instead of BowditchPhædon instead of Bowditch: Phaedon is an alternate spelling—found in English, French, and German translations, as early as 1833, that Melville may have known—for Plato’s metaphysical dialogue Phaedo, which argues that the soul is immortal. In contrast is Nathaniel Bowditch’s highly pragmatic New American Practical Navigator (1802, and many later editions), which was the standard guide to navigation in this world. in his head. Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before they can beREVISION NARRATIVE: can be killed // In the sentence, “your whales must be seen before they can be killed,” probably Melville (and not an editor) changed “can be” to “are.” The tinkering sharpens the tone. killed; and this sunken-eyed young REVISION NARRATIVE: young Platonist // Perhaps at the same time Melville changed "can be" to "are," he also removed the word “young” from “this sunken-eyed young Platonist.” The revision indicates a modification of Melville’s argument, for, without the adjective, Ishmael speaks of any Platonist, not just young ones. Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earthcarking cares of earth: Echoing, perhaps, “the cares of this world” (Mark 4.19), and “cares of this life” (Luke 21.34). Carking means burdensome and distressing., and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe HaroldChilde Harold: World-traveling, self-absorbed young protagonist in Lord George Byron's semi-autobiographical epic Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18). Melville read Byron from his school days on, and his admiration is recorded in comic and serious registers, here in the playfully revised line quoted below (see note), and later in an echoing of the same wording in the novel's dramatic final line, in Ch. 135. not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates:—
“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
Ten thousand blubber-hunters“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! / Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.”: Substituting blubber-hunters for “fleets,” Melville parodies Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (canto 4, stanza 179), a poem he had criticized in his 1847 review of J. Ross Browne. Whatever his opinion of the poem, the "Roll on" phrasing anticipates the more serious borrowing from Byron (and Milton) at the end of Ch. 135. sweep over thee in vain.”
Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient “interest” in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left their opera-glasses at home.
“Why, thou monkey,” said a harpooneer to one of these lads, “we’ve been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen’s teeth whenever thou art up here.” Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoalsshoals: large groups. of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Cranmer’s sprinkled Pantheistic ashesREVISION NARRATIVE: like Cranmer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes // The British edition alters the phrase “Cranmer’s sprinkled Pantheistic ashes,” by changing the name and dropping "Pantheistic," to give “Wickliff’s sprinkled ashes.” Both Thomas Cranmer (Henry VIII’s Archbishop of Canterbury, later deposed) and William Wycliffe (early anti-papist and translator of the Bible) were burned at the stake, but only Wycliffe’s ashes were spread (famously) over water, on the river Swift, a tributary of the Avon, which leads to the sea. Melville certainly erred in writing "Cranmer's," and his revision, probably in the revised copy of Moby-Dick he sent to England, is an intended correction, although an editor might have noted the factual error and corrected it. An editor might have removed “Pantheistic” on vague religious grounds, but Melville would have reason to cut the word here as well. While Wycliffe’s ashes were spread everywhere, they are not therefore pantheistic (nor was Wycliffe a pantheist). Moreover, since Ishmael uses a version of the word in his last line—“Heed it well, ye Pantheists!”—Melville might also have cut the dubious reference regarding Wycliffe’s ashes so as not to undermine its more effective use in the chapter’s ending. Of these changes, the editors of the NN Moby-Dick, adopted only one for their reading text. Assuming Melville intended to correct the name, they changed “Cranmer’s” to the British edition's spelling “Wickliff’s.” However, in keeping to its policy of not mixing versions, MEL makes no change but instead explains Melville’s strategies through revision annotation. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin., forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vorticesDescartian vortices: René Descartes (1596–1650) theorized that all physical motion is circular. you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!Heed it well, ye Pantheists!: Pantheism, a view held by thinkers including Plato, Spinoza, and Emerson, is the belief that a universal spirit (or God) suffuses all existence. But here Ishmael warns that integration with the whole can also mean loss of individual life. Paraphrasing Carlyle’s rendering of Goethe, in his June [1] 1851 letter to Hawthorne, Melville objected to the idea that we can always “live in the all” but added: “there is some truth in it.”