‘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…
