The Furling of the Sails

Shelley Piasecka.

Photo courtesy of Shelley Piasecka.

On a rather overcast, drizzly day last June, I found myself boarding the Charles W. Morgan, a beautifully preserved nineteenth-century whaling ship. Launched in 1841, with 37 whaling voyages to her name, her current home is Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut. Impressive by any maritime standards, she is the last remaining wooden ship of her kind. In 2014, following a period of restoration, the Charles W. Morgan embarked on her 38^th voyage, visiting seaports throughout New England. Once involved in the hunting of whales, she is now an ambassador for ocean sustainability and sea life conservation, a remarkable change of tack for a ship of her history. To borrow Melville's description of the Pequod, I thought her a noble craft.

Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, Associate Professor of English and Maritime Studies at the University of Connecticut, arranged the visit to Mystic Seaport Museum as a post-conference day trip for participants of "Melville's Origins: The Twelfth International Melville Conference," a week-long event of scholarly papers, keynote talks, film-showings, round-table discussions, poetry readings, and guided walks of Manhattan to mark the bicentennial of Melville's birth. Before our visit to Mystic, we also enjoyed an evening drinks reception on the Wavertree, an imposing iron-constructed cargo ship built in 1885, and a tour of the Merchant's House, the home of the Tredwells, an affluent New York family.

I had attended the conference to join a panel on adaptations of Moby-Dick chaired by Dennis Berthold and was fortunate to present alongside the eminent Samuel Otter, Robert K. Wallace, and Alex Benson. Earlier that month, I had staged an adaptation of Moby-Dick on the Zebu, a brigantine under restoration at the Albert Dock, Liverpool. In 1839, Melville arrived in Liverpool on the St. Lawrence, a merchant ship sailing out of New York. He would write in the novel Redburn, "Sailors love this Liverpool; and upon voyages to distant parts of the globe, will be continually dilating upon its charms and attractions, and extolling above all other seaports in the world" (138). Given Melville's association with the city, particularly with the waterfront, the Zebu seemed a particularly befitting site. This said, she is a tall ship and not a whaler. The Charles W. Morgan, therefore, offered an unparalleled opportunity to see at first-hand an actual whaleship. I was particularly interested in the tryworks, the blubber room, the forecastle, the quarter-deck, and the cabin table, all key references in the novel. From an adaptor's perspective, to test the weight of a harpoon, to run one's fingers across the warm wooden panelling, to lean over the bulwarks, and to lie down on a cramped bunk is to understand the source text in an entirely new and embodied way.

This idea came to the fore later that morning. We'd been invited to row a whaleboat and after a remarkably smooth ride out on the river, thanks to my fellow Melvillean oarsmen/women, we pulled up alongside the blackened hull of the Charles W. Morgan. By now, the drizzle had turned into a very determined downpour. Far from spoiling the experience, the weather seemed perfectly in tune with our surroundings. I realised that I hadn't taken into consideration the sheer size of a whaling ship nor had I appreciated fully the dangers of whaling. I knew this on an intellectual level, of course. But, somehow, being on the water, dwarfed by the ship, underpinned my reading of the novel. I thought of Pip's nervous lowering on that fateful day and of Melville's observations that all men live under a shadow: "All men live enveloped in whale lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the subtle, ever-present perils of life" (281).

After a lunch of clam chowder (naturally), I headed to Greenmanville Church for an entertaining performance of "Moby-Dick in Minutes" by the...