Moby-Dick and Literature

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"Though the Clerk of the Weather insist, / And lay down the weather-law, / Pintado and gannet they wist / That the winds blow whither they list / In tempest or flaw."

Wyn Kelley: ‘The Winds Blow Whither They List’

New Media Literacy, Participatory Culture, and the 38th Voyage of the Charles W. Morgan

"How would we, the voyagers, find quiet moments for reflection on this remarkable voyage? How would we behave among strangers?"

Wyn Kelley: The Bunk

"The bunks looked clean, simple, graceful, light. I tried to imagine sleeping in one. For the next ten weeks I tried to imagine sleeping in one. Those bunks looked hard."

Wyn Kelley Melville portrait

Wyn Kelley: Melville for engineers and scientists

As MIT students discover, “Moby-Dick is full of the very same physical forces that engineers and scientists study and manipulate."

"Melville could laud the inhuman sea because he had experienced the participatory culture of sailor communities aboard ships like the Charles W. Morgan."

Wyn Kelley: “Lauding the Inhuman Sea”

A scholar ponders Melville's pessimism and connects it to our own time.

Hester Blum Temple-toggle Harpoon

Hester Blum: 18 Hours Before the Mast

"The tattoo I thought I would get was the head of a Temple toggle harpoon. I was setting sail on the 38th Voyage of the Charles W. Morgan, and I wanted a tattoo to commemorate my journey."

"The radiant faces of my friends as this iconic vessel tied up at the wharf in New Bedford evoked pure joy, a deep and transcendent emotion, possibly akin to the realization of one’s best beloved returning home after a long and uncertain absence or a physical reaction to the unexpected fulfillment of a long-suspected desire."

Michael P. Dyer: Magic, Luck, and My Passage

"Many have called the Charles W. Morgan a “lucky ship.” I don’t know about that... the word “magical,” I think, may be a better description."

Whittemore reading Moby-Dick

Peter Whittemore: A Top-Gallant Salute. The 38th Voyage of the Charles W. Morgan

Delivered by a descendant of Herman Melville, Peter Gansevoort Whittemore, on the occasion of her homecoming to New Bedford, MA.

Wallace New Bedford

Robert Wallace: mobyart blog

"I realized that what I thought would be an essay was becoming more like a book."

Marine Quarterly article by Lesley Walker

Lesley Walker: How to Go a-Whaling

"There is no better whaling port than New Bedford, Massachusetts. Here I found myself stranded between ships, pockets empty. Before I knew it, I had signed a paper...and it was too late to try swimming ashore."

Robert Wallace: Steering Out of the Haven

“What is there to steering a ship when it is being towed by a tug that determines its course?” Much more than you might think.