Moby-Dick and Literature

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"How many hundreds of other young men, for example, served on whalers, without writing a word about it, or perhaps even being able to do so? There is nothing probable, really, about Melville turning his whaling years into literature..."

Ellie Stedall: Sea-Room

As Melville noted, “You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the Truth in.”

"I stood for a long time on those ropes, facing the sky. The fifteen percent of myself that still remained of the little girl reading Moby-Dick in the armchair was the girl who, even though none were expected that day, looked out to the water for whales."

Julia Pistell: An Account of a Voyage on the Charles W. Morgan

A podcast interview and essay.

John Bryant: crew working

John Bryant: Melville, the Morgan, and Me

A Melville biographer explores his subject through a 21st century adventure on a 19th century ship.

Daniel Payne: Out of Mystic

Photographs and poems from the 38th Voyge of the Charles W. Morgan.

John Bryant: Work

A ship is a place of work. And the work begins with language.

"But because I’ve trod the Morgan’s deck, watched her 19 sails unfurl, explored her blubber room, because I know her live oak keel steadies her, she becomes precise in word and paint. With the barbaric Pequod, Ryder’s moonlit vessels, Turner’s whale ships, spewing gore into a blood red dawn, the Morgan now looms and moves across the canvas of my mind, sails billowing."

Elizabeth Schultz: Ishmael on the Morgan

Poems inspired by the 38th Voyage.

Holding a copy of Moby-Dick high, Stubb the second mate urges his rowers forward, in fierce pursuit of their prey. His shipmates, facing him in pairs along a conference table in Building 2, strain at their oars. The whale, a senior in biological engineering, breaches and dives in the vast watery space between table and blackboards...

Wyn Kelley: Ahoy, Engineers!

From STEM to stern, Herman Melville’s classic whaling novel resonates with MIT students.

Blum mates desk

Hester Blum: A List of Books that I Did Not Read on the Voyage

"The questions that structured my encounter with the whaleship, as it turned out, found unexpected answers: I neither read nor wrote a word while aboard."

Blum hardtack

Hester Blum: Hardtack

"A staple of sea voyages and military campaigns for centuries, hardtack is exceptionally dry, solid, and designed to be non-perishable; it is not edible until soaked in liquid, and—if sailors’ jokes are any indication— not even then."

Blum in rigging

Hester Blum: Sailing Stories

"I was high in the rigging of the last remaining wooden whaleship in the world... and I was mildly terrified."