Product Code Database
Mocha Dick (; died 1838) was a rogue Albinism (or possibly Leucism) male sperm whale ( Physeter macrocephalus) that lived in the southeastern Pacific Ocean in the early 19th century, usually encountered in the waters near Mocha Island, off the central coast of Chile. American Exploration and author J. N. Reynolds published an account of the whale in Mocha Dick, Or The White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a Manuscript Journal, printed in The Knickerbocker in 1839. Mocha Dick was, apparently, part of the inspiration behind Herman Melville's novel, Moby-Dick (1851).Andrew Delbanco. Melville, His World and Work. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005: 167–168.
Mocha Dick was most likely first encountered and attacked sometime before 1810 off Mocha Island. His survival of the first encounters coupled with his unusual appearance quickly made him famous among Nantucket whalers. Many captains attempted to hunt him after rounding Cape Horn. Mocha Dick was quite docile, sometimes swimming alongside the ship, but once attacked he retaliated with ferocity and cunning, and was widely feared by . When agitated he would sound and then breach so aggressively that his entire body would sometimes come completely out of the water.Whipple, A. B. C. Yankee Whalers in the South Seas. Doubleday, 1954.
In Reynolds' account, Mocha Dick was killed in 1838, after he appeared to come to the aid of a distraught cow whose calf had just been slain by the whalers. His body was 70 feet long and yielded 100 barrels of oil, along with some ambergris—a substance used in the making of perfumes and at times worth more per ounce than gold. He also had 20 harpoons in his body.
A decade later, The Knickerbocker reported another sighting of Mocha Dick in the Arctic Ocean, concluding, "Vive Mocha Dick!"" Editor's Table, The Knickerbocker, Vol. 33, 1849.
In 1952, Time magazine reported the harpooning of a white whale off the coast of Peru." Science: Captain Ahab Avenged", Time. February 11, 1952. Since 1991, there have been sightings reported of a white humpback whale near Australia, nicknamed Migaloo.Kaine, Charmaine. Migaloo: Sightings of famous white whale likely to become rarer, expert says, ABC News. August 11, 2015. Accessed: November 20, 2015. In 2012, a white humpback, nicknamed Willow the White Whale, Waters, Hannah. Call Me Migaloo: The Story Behind Real-Life White Whales, Smithsonian Magazine. September 17, 2013. Accessed: May 23, 2023. was filmed off the coast of Norway. Sightings of white sperm whales have also been recorded off Sardinia in the Mediterranean Sea in 2006 and 2015. sighting of white whale in Sardinia More recently, a white sperm whale was filmed in Caribbean waters offshore from Jamaica in 2021, by crew of a Dutch merchant ship.
Noted explorer Tim Severin wrote (in his 1999 book In Search of Moby Dick: Quest for the White Whale) of traveling about the Pacific, inquiring among indigenous fishermen and watermen about white whales, in personal experience or local folklore.
In 2010, Williams College Museum of Art presented a whale-sized work titled "Mocha Dick" — a , ghostly white sperm whale sculptured from industrial felt, created by artist Tristin Lowe. The art show was sponsored by the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program, an interdisciplinary ocean and coastal studies program created by Williams College and the Mystic Seaport maritime museum. In an interview with The Berkshire Eagle, Lowe said, "This is the archetypical whale... It's so symbolic: 'Moby Dick,' the white whale, and to have it all based on a real whale 'as white as wool,' it was all too perfect. There's a majestic quality to the whale, a calling, almost like the sea/ocean itself."
|
|
