Everyone of my generation was forced to read Heman Merville’s MOBY DICK. THe first line of this epic novel “Call me Ishmael” was burned into our memories and teachers spent days trying to decipher the meaning of author, but none of us were aware of MOBY DICK’s voyage in American Literature having only sold 3000 copies during Merville’s life. After slipping out of popularity Merville was employed at the US Customms House in Lower Manhattan. I have visted that oval room many times and imagined Merville working day after day at a meaningless job dreaming of foreign places and a pen in his hand. I discovered a mist-masked bust of Merville near the Customs House, but in recent years I haven’t been able to find the wall panel, as if he was once more banisheded into neglect. Thus flees fame and Merville died in 1891 with none of his books in print. but I still love TYPEE, his romantic novel about two sailors deserting thier whaling ship in the Marquesas Island. It shed light on a world beyond the land.
First lines from TYPEE
CHAPTER ONE
THE SEA–LONGINGS FOR SHORE–A LAND-SICK SHIP–DESTINATION OF THE
VOYAGERS–THE MARQUESAS–ADVENTURE OF A MISSIONARY’S WIFE AMONG
THE SAVAGES–CHARACTERISTIC ANECDOTE OF THE QUEEN OF NUKUHEVA
Six months at sea! Yes, reader, as I live, six months out of
sight of land; cruising after the sperm-whale beneath the
scorching sun of the Line, and tossed on the billows of the
wide-rolling Pacific–the sky above, the sea around, and nothing
else! Weeks and weeks ago our fresh provisions were all
exhausted. There is not a sweet potato left; not a single yam.
Those glorious bunches of bananas, which once decorated our stern
and quarter-deck, have, alas, disappeared! and the delicious
oranges which hung suspended from our tops and stays–they, too,
are gone! Yes, they are all departed, and there is nothing left
us but salt-horse and sea-biscuit. Oh! ye state-room sailors,
who make so much ado about a fourteen-days’ passage across the
Atlantic; who so pathetically relate the privations and hardships
of the sea, where, after a day of breakfasting, lunching, dining
off five courses, chatting, playing whist, and drinking
champagne-punch, it was your hard lot to be shut up in little
cabinets of mahogany and maple, and sleep for ten hours, with
nothing to disturb you but ‘those good-for-nothing tars, shouting
and tramping overhead’,–what would ye say to our six months out
of sight of land?
My family whaled the oceans.
Atlantic and Pacific.
My great-grandfather died at sea twice.
I have killed nothing and never eaten man.
I’m not scared of nothing than the jaws of Mooka Dick.
