Nantucket -- At right we see Old North Wharf with buildings that once housed boats but now shelter vacationers.News of the Essex catastrophe reached a young harpooner named Herman Melville when his whaling ship met another vessel carrying the son of one of the Essex survivors, within 100 miles of where the Essex had been rammed. The rest is literary but not commercial, history. Nantucket and whaling permeate "Moby Dick" even though Melville did not visit this island until after its publication. Nevertheless, Chapter 14 calls Nantucket "...an elbow of sand " and concludes that "Nantucket is no Illinois." Melville arrived in 1852, 6 years after the Great Fire, and was accompanied by his father-in-law, the Chief Justice of Massachusetts, who was required to periodically hear cases on the island. They stayed across the street from the home of the captain who survived the Essex. 48 hours after he came ashore, Melville went back to the mainland. We stayed longer but wrote of the island not as well.
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