Mocha Dick
Mocha Dick (pronounced: ˈmɔːtʃæ dɪk ) was a large male sperm whale with light skin and a white scar that marked him on his head. Whalers who sighted the extraordinary whale around 1810 near the island of Mocha off the Chilean coast gave it this name.
The explorer and journalist Jeremiah N. Reynolds described it in detail in the May 1839 New York magazine The Knickerbocker in his article Mocha Dick: or The White Whale of the Pacific .
Herman Melville was inspired by the stories about Mocha Dick among whalers for his novel Moby-Dick . Melville had been active on whaling ships off Chile in the 1840s. The novel was published in 1851.
Swedish whalers reported that they hunted the whale in 1859, but it was declared a "terrorist of the sea" in the international press along with other attacking large white whale bulls such as Spotted Tom , Shy Jack , Ugly Jim and Fighting Joe and received high bounties exposed.
Individual evidence
- ^ Jeremiah N. Reynolds: babel.hathitrust.org | Mocha Dick: or The White Whale of the Pacific , The Knickerbocker, May 1839, accessed April 27, 2019