Quotes About Whalemen

it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should go still further in their superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality is but ubiquity in time);

The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head, still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.

So that here, in the real living experience of living men, the prodigies related in old times of the inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near whose top there was said to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface); and that still more wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain near Syracuse (whose waters were believed to have come from the Holy Land by an underground passage); these fabulous narrations are almost fully equalled by the realities of the whalemen.

These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks—

These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks— the Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist.

Yet all shared in a common, spiritually infused mission—to maintain a peaceful life on land while raising bloody havoc at sea. Pacifist killers, plain-dressed millionaires, the whalemen of Nantucket were simply fulfilling the Lord's will.

Even if Nantucket's Quakers dominated the island economically and culturally, room was made for others, and by the early nineteenth century there were two Congregational church towers bracketing the town north and south. Yet all shared in a common, spiritually infused mission—to maintain a peaceful life on land while raising bloody havoc at sea. Pacifist killers, plain-dressed millionaires, the whalemen of Nantucket were simply fulfilling the Lord's will.

On an island of paradoxes, the Quaker whalemen were perhaps the most paradoxical. At once pacifist whalehunters, plain-dressed millionaires, abolitionist floggers of common seamen, and devoted family men who were never home, these "Quakers with a vengeance" embodied a truly mind-boggling array of contradictions.

There was also the whalemen's traditional social pursuit—the gam. Originally a Nantucket word which meant a group of whales, gam became applied to a group of whaleships that had gathered together to exchange gossip and news.