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Whaling shipwreck linked to 'Moby-Dick' discovered
Source: Agencies |
February 12, 2011, Saturday
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MARINE archeologists off Hawaii have found the sunken remains of a 19th century whaling vessel skippered by a captain whose ordeal from an earlier shipwreck inspired the Herman Melville classic "Moby-Dick."
Iron and ceramic scraps from the Nantucket whaling ship known as Two Brothers were located in shallow waters nearly 600 miles (965 km) from Honolulu in the remote chain of islands and atolls that make up the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
The discovery was announced yesterday by researchers from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which led the initial 2008 expedition to the wreck and subsequent explorations of the site during the past two years.
The ship, which struck a reef and foundered in 1823, was skippered by Captain George Pollard Jr.
Two years earlier, Pollard commanded another ship that was rammed by a whale and sank in the South Pacific in a saga immortalized in Melville's 1851 novel "Moby-Dick."
NOAA said this marks the first discovery of a sunken whaler from Nantucket, Massachusetts, birthplace of a US whaling industry that played a key role in America's economic and political expansion into the Pacific.
The wreck lies in an area protected by the US government as the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, a fact that expedition leader Kelly Gleason, a marine archeologist, said was key in helping to preserve the site.
Artifacts found there include two anchors, three cast-iron trypots used for melting whale blubber, remains of the vessel's rigging, harpoon tips, whaling lances and cooking utensils.
Iron and ceramic scraps from the Nantucket whaling ship known as Two Brothers were located in shallow waters nearly 600 miles (965 km) from Honolulu in the remote chain of islands and atolls that make up the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
The discovery was announced yesterday by researchers from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which led the initial 2008 expedition to the wreck and subsequent explorations of the site during the past two years.
The ship, which struck a reef and foundered in 1823, was skippered by Captain George Pollard Jr.
Two years earlier, Pollard commanded another ship that was rammed by a whale and sank in the South Pacific in a saga immortalized in Melville's 1851 novel "Moby-Dick."
NOAA said this marks the first discovery of a sunken whaler from Nantucket, Massachusetts, birthplace of a US whaling industry that played a key role in America's economic and political expansion into the Pacific.
The wreck lies in an area protected by the US government as the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, a fact that expedition leader Kelly Gleason, a marine archeologist, said was key in helping to preserve the site.
Artifacts found there include two anchors, three cast-iron trypots used for melting whale blubber, remains of the vessel's rigging, harpoon tips, whaling lances and cooking utensils.
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