Moby Dick coin
The so-called Moby-Dick coin is a gold coin from Ecuador that plays a central role in the book Moby-Dick . The gold coin with the base of the Spanish escudo was struck in Quito between 1838 and 1843. It was issued in versions 1 / 2,1,2,4 and 8 escudos, making it the country's first gold coin.
numismatics
On the top you can see the female allegory of freedom, the "la Libertad" and on the back the first coat of arms of the country, as chosen by Juan José Flores in 1833 and existed in 1843. It was not until 1836 that the coat of arms of the republic was described in a currency minting ordinance issued on June 14: The zodiac signs in the course of the sun represented the months of the revolution of 1820, with the four zodiac signs from Leo , Virgo , Libra and Scorpio ; the course of the sun shows the equator . In the celestial arc it has seven five-pointed stars that represent the 7 provinces of Ecuador. The two mountains represent the Guagua Pichincha and the Ruco Pichincha volcano , each with an Andean condor .
| Coin foot | material | Fineness | Weight | Ø (mm) | country | output |
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| 8 escudos | gold |
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1838 to 1843 |
| 4 escudos | gold |
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1838 to 1843 |
| 2 escudos * | gold |
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1838 to 1843 |
| 1 escudo | gold |
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1838 to 1843 |
| ½ escudo | gold |
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1838 to 1843 |
| * = The two escudo coin was called the doubloon | ||||||
Ounce or doubloon
Captain Ahab advertises the coin (Chapter 36) as an ounce worth $ 16 . In the course of history (chapter 99), the coin is a doubloon referred. This is now inconsistent, as a doubloon weighs 6.77 g, but an ounce weighs 28.35 g. If it were an 8 Escudo coin, it would weigh 27.06 g with a fine gold content of 23.67 g, which would be about an ounce, but certainly not a doubloon. The original (Roman) ounce was 27.2875 grams. However, if you take into account the gold-dollar ratio of 1855, then 16 dollars was worth 24.04 grams of fine gold, then it can basically only be the eight escudo coin, which is neither a doubloon nor an ounce.
history
In Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick (1851) , Captain Ahab has a one- ounce gold coin, worth $ 16, nailed to the mast of his ship's quarters deck. This is also referred to below as the doubloon . This should be a reward for whoever sees the white whale Moby Dick first.
"Look ye! d'ye see this Spanish ounce of gold? ”- holding up a broad bright coin to the sun -“ it is a sixteen dollar piece, men. D'ye see it? […] Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke — look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys! "
In the later chapter, the text deals with the force that the coin exerts on the team and describes it in more detail so that there is no doubt about the assignment:
"It so balanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, Republica del Ecuador: Quito. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra. […] There's now the old Mogul, "soliloquized Stubb by the try-works," he's been twigging it; and there goes Starbuck from the same, and both with faces which I should say might be somewhere within nine fathoms long. And all from looking at a piece of gold, which did I have it now on Negro Hill or in Corlaer's Hook, I'd not look at it very long ere spending it. Humph! in my poor, insignificant opinion, I regard this as queer. I have seen doubloons before now in my voyagings; your doubloons of old Spain, your doubloons of Peru, your doubloons of Chili, your doubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of Popayan; with plenty of gold moidores and pistoles, and joes, and half joes, and quarter joes. What then should there be in this doubloon of the Equator that is so killing wonderful? "
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ Cuhaj, George S., and Thomas Michael, Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1801-1900, 7th ed., Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2012
- ↑ Harald Witthöft in Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Volume 4, 1423.
- ↑ Chapter 36 The Quarter Deck
- ↑ Chapter 99 The Doubloon