🎤017 Moby Full Text Ch33

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CHAPTER 33 THE SPECKSYNDER. Footnotes

PRE: So, the way the chapter flows is from an old title that has lost its authority, to the idea that Ahab has authority separate from his official title. The thesis is that all the “usages” and “traditions” of the sea are nothing in the face of true power.

POST: Ahab is never described as having some sort of inherent, in-born greatness. Rather, all of his power comes from experience and dedication to his trade. Perhaps the idea is that anyone could be an Ahab, which is both a good and bad thing.

In a similar way, Ishmael is trapped between his deep respect for Ahab and his knowledge of what happens to the Pequod and everyone on it. He heaps these honors on his old captain’s head as a way of explaining what happened, a way of making sense of things. Ahab must have been powerful, must have been truly great, for him to be responsible for such a tremendous tragedy. (like Japanese post-war - we must have been wrong)

But gosh it sure is a lot of bluster about a man who hasn’t done much yet, huh. The sum total of Ahab’s actual actions in the book so far are: standing on the deck doing nothing, scaring one of his mates, and tossing away his pipe out of despair. Everything is working off portent and omen, even now

CHAPTER 33: THE SPECK¹SYNDER.²

Here’s the term I’m starting with

Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board, arising from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a class unknown of course in any other marine³ than the whale-fleet.

Here’s why it’s unique to whaling

The large importance attached to the harpooneer’s vocation is evinced by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries and more ago, the command of a whale ship was not wholly lodged in the person now called the captain, but was divided between him and an officer called the Specksynder. Literally this word means Fat-Cutter; usage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer. In those days, the captain’s authority was restricted to the navigation and general management of the vessel: while over the whale-hunting department and all its concerns, the Specksynder or Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still retained, but his former dignity is sadly abridged. At present he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the captain’s more inferior subalterns.⁴ Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct of the harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely depends, and since in the American Fishery he is not only an important officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances (night watches on a whaling ground) the command of the ship’s deck is also his; therefore the grand political maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live apart from the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as their professional superior; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as their social equal.

Here’s how you can tell that Harpooneers are still a step above on a whaling vessel

Now, the grand distinction  drawn between officer and man at sea, is this—the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in the captain’s cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it. 

This is partly because they ALL have skin in the game - not simply getting wages—though that doesn’t stop captains from being Masters of Their Domains

Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the longest of all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils of it, and the community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom, high or low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their common luck, together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and hard work; though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind how much like an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some primitive instances, live together;⁵ for all that, the punctilious externals,⁶ at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost as much outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple,⁷ and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth.

Ahab’s a little different - obedience was all, no other outward signs of deference required by him.

And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only homage he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though he required no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the quarter-deck;⁸ and though there were times when, owing to peculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or in terrorem,⁹ or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usages¹⁰ of the sea.

Ahab wasn’t above using the default status he had to his own benefit (though we won’t know what that is for a bit) - default status helped by some people’s weakness/idiocy and the Peter Principle (basically)

Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism¹¹ became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship.¹² For be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true princes of the Empire¹³ from the world’s hustings;¹⁴ and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert,¹⁵ than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar,¹⁶ the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain;¹⁷ then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direst swing,¹⁸ ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded to.

Ahab doesn’t give any “grand” vibes, so I (Ishmael) need to explain that we have to search for what makes him great

But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings and housings are denied me.¹⁹ Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!

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Footnotes

Footnotes

1. Speck, in Dutch/German/Yiddish (schpeck) means “fat” ↩

2. SpeckSNIder - this was an oops because schneider or snyder was a tailor (someone who cuts). ↩

3. shipping fleet, like merchant marines ↩

4. subalterns - subordinates ↩

5. Mesopotamian family - i.e., the whalers are all living together in a single room (at least the before-the-mast guys were) ↩

6. punctilious externals - precise formalities ↩

7. imperial purple - reserved for the Roman Emporer and later, for other royalty ↩

8. Meaning Ahab didn’t think of the quarter-deck to be sacred. (Exodus 3:5 and later Acts 7:33—God tells Moses: “put off thy shoes from off they feed; for the place wehreon thou standest is holy ground.”) ↩

9. in terrorem - to create fear ↩

10. forms and usages - procedures and customs ↩

11. sultanism - here Melville means “absolute power” ↩

12. Vs The Resistable Rise of Artuo Ui (1941) (a TV Production.) [Brecht in front of the HUAC in 1947](https://youtu.be/GkiqGxD4CZ8?si=m-ttF09t28h8wyHK - I beleive he got on an airplain immediately after this) ↩

13. God’s true Princes of the Empire: the spiritual elite called “the Divine Inert” below. In history, Princes of the Empire elected the Holy Roman Emperor but were not, themselves, elected; The Empire here means Holy Roman Empire (800-1806) ↩

14. hustings - speaking platforms/political campaigns ↩

15. lesser intellects will always wind up with the leadership positions and they always need some sort of trick or technique to get there (tricks since they aren’t really all that smart to begin with). Divine Inert - those chosen by God for extra knowledge and holiness; this is an idea put forth by the Gnostics, an early Christian sect ↩

16. Nicholas I (1796-1855) absolute ruler of Russia from 1825 until death. ↩

17. When a leader has surrounded himself with power, everyone cowers - not because this is a great person, but because a stupid powerful person can do a lot of damage. ↩

18. Original US copy said: “direct swing” - which makes no sense and was corrected in later copies. ↩

19. There’s nothing easy to point to (no externals) for why he was such an all-powerful leader ↩