On 7 May 1841, the whaling ship Acushnet, newly built at Fairhaven, Massachusetts, fell in with the whaler William Wirt, of Nantucket, near the Pacific island of Juan Fernández (Alexander Selkirk's lonely home during the years 1704-9), off the coast of Chile. One of the Acushnet's fo'c'sle crew was the young Herman Melville. The two ships hove to for a few hours while their masters visited each other, and the 22-year-old Melville caught sight of the Wirt's captain. He was impressed: 'He was a large, powerful, well-made man; rather tall; to all appearances something past forty-five or so; with a handsome face for a Yankee, & expressive of great uprightness & calm unostentatious courage. His whole appearance impressed me . . . He was the most prepossessing-looking whale-hunter I think I ever saw.'

LRB 8 March 2001 | PDF Download