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Mocha Island ( ) is a island located west of the coast of Arauco Province in the Pacific Ocean. The island is the location of numerous historic shipwrecks. In Mapuche mythology, the souls of dead people travel west to visit this island. The waters off the island are a popular place for recreational sea fishing.
According to Juan Ignacio Molina, the Dutch captain Joris van Spilbergen observed the use of (a South American camelid) by native of Mocha Island as plough in 1614. The Geographical, Natural and Civil History of Chili, Pages 15 and 16, Volume II
Mocha Island was regularly visited by Pirate and privateers from the Netherlands and England. Francis Drake and Olivier van Noort are known to have used the island as a supply base. When Drake was visiting it during his circumnavigation of the globe he was seriously hurt by its Mapuche inhabitants. Richard Hawkins, Drake's cousin, also passed with his ship the Dainty. In 1685, the Mapuche were transported by Governor José de Garro to a reducción on the plain on the right bank of the Bio Bio River called the Valley of Mocha that later became the location of the modern city of Concepción, Chile.
The waters off the island were inhabited by sperm whale, including Mocha Dick, who was depicted by American explorer and author Jeremiah N. Reynolds in his published account, "Mocha Dick: Or The White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a Manuscript Journal" in May, 1839 in The Knickerbocker magazine in New York.J. N. Reynolds. " Mocha Dick: or the White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a Manuscript Journal," The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine. Vol. 13, No. 5, May 1839, pp. 377–392. Mocha Dick was one of the inspirations for the fictional whale Moby Dick in the 1851 novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.Andrew Delbanco. Melville, His World and Work. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005: 167–168.
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