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Ahab's Rolling Sea: A Natural History of "Moby-Dick"

Richard J. King (Goodreads Author)

4.22 · Rating details · 41 ratings · 12 reviews

Although Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is beloved as one of the most profound and enduring works of American fiction, we rarely consider it a work of nature writing—or even a novel of the sea. Yet Pulitzer Prize–winning author Annie Dillard avers Moby-Dick is the “best book ever written about nature,” and nearly the entirety of the story is set on the waves, with scarcely a Although Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is beloved as one of the most profound and enduring works of American fiction, we rarely consider it a work of nature writing—or even a novel of the sea. Yet Pulitzer Prize–winning author Annie Dillard avers Moby-Dick is the “best book ever written about nature,” and nearly the entirety of the story is set on the waves, with scarcely a whiff of land. In fact, Ishmael’s sea yarn is in conversation with the nature writing of Emerson and Thoreau, and Melville himself did much more than live for a year in a cabin beside a pond. He set sail: to the far remote Pacific Ocean, spending more than three years at sea before writing his masterpiece in 1851.

A revelation for Moby-Dick devotees and neophytes alike, Ahab’s Rolling Sea is a chronological journey through the natural history of Melville’s novel. From white whales to whale intelligence, giant squids, barnacles, albatross, and sharks, Richard J. King examines what Melville knew from his own experiences and the sources available to a reader in the mid-1800s, exploring how and why Melville might have twisted what was known to serve his fiction. King then climbs to the crow’s nest, setting Melville in the context of the American perception of the ocean in 1851—at the very start of the Industrial Revolution and just before the publication of On the Origin of Species. King compares Ahab’s and Ishmael’s worldviews to how we see the ocean today: an expanse still immortal and sublime, but also in crisis. And although the concept of stewardship of the sea would have been entirely foreign, if not absurd, to Melville, King argues that Melville’s narrator Ishmael reveals his own tendencies toward what we would now call environmentalism.

Featuring a coffer of illustrations and an array of interviews with contemporary scientists, fishers, and whale watch operators, Ahab’s Rolling Sea offers new insight not only into a cherished masterwork and its author but also into our evolving relationship with the briny deep—from whale hunters to climate refugees. ...more

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Hardcover, 464 pages

Published November 11th 2019 by University of Chicago Press

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Jun 03, 2020 James Murphy rated it it was amazing

Ahab's Rolling Sea is a book I'd think interesting and of use to anyone who reads Moby-Dick. It describes how Americans understood the oceans during Melville's lifetime, and it explains what whaling was like during the age of sail. While every aspect of the ocean is discussed--wind, navigation, chemistry--most of the chapters examine the many kinds of life and what the sailors knew about them in that pre-Darwin time. Most detailed, of course, are whales and particularly the sperm whale. The stru Ahab's Rolling Sea is a book I'd think interesting and of use to anyone who reads Moby-Dick. It describes how Americans understood the oceans during Melville's lifetime, and it explains what whaling was like during the age of sail. While every aspect of the ocean is discussed--wind, navigation, chemistry--most of the chapters examine the many kinds of life and what the sailors knew about them in that pre-Darwin time. Most detailed, of course, are whales and particularly the sperm whale. The structure of the book roughly follows the voyage of the Pequod. Early chapters discuss cetology in general. Soon the chapters tie in the various forms of life encountered as the ship sails through the Indian Ocean. Storms greet the Pequod as it enters the Pacific. The 3 days of Ahab dueling with Moby-Dick is contained in a long chapter called "Sperm Whale Behavior." And the conclusion necessarily, I think, covers some of the environmental changes which have occurred in the last 150 years and those to come. King even deftly weaves in considerations of Ishmael as an environmentalist.

I've always been attracted by the idea of the young Melville on deck looking out at where there's only sea and sky and realizing they just go on and on, out and out, "immortal and indifferent," in King's phrase. I can't imagine he could've written the Moby-Dick we have without that kind of understanding. But King doesn't spend much time speculating on the metaphysical world of the novel or the spiritual motivations of characters. He barely brushes up against meanings but mentions that Melville was aware of new ideas on deep time and how they might affect one's concepts of divinity and creation. He was still a century away from the discovery that whales evolved from land mammals or any of our understanding of the Pacific's geology. King simply quotes scholar Elizabeth Foster: "At some time between Typee and Moby-Dick, Melville's universe changed: the benevolent hand of a Father disappeared from the tiller of the world," and he leaves it at that. In the end it doesn't matter that Melville and Ishmael and Starbuck and Flask knew so much less than we know about the ocean and whales. King's description of the world as they knew it is more fascinating than limited. ...more

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Jun 13, 2020 Steve Wiggins rated it really liked it

I’m not shy about admitting Moby Dick to be my favorite novel. Each time I read it I think it will probably be my last. I’ve always been opposed to whaling, and I’m a vegan to boot. Still, when someone gave me Richard J. King’s Ahab’s Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby-Dick I knew I was in for an add-on treat. I confess in my blog post about the book (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World) that this gift prompted me to read Moby Dick again. I finished it before I picked this volume up, and ...more

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Aug 02, 2020 Jane rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction-memoir, nautical

Full disclosure, this was written by a professor I had at the Williams-Mystic program (F02), which was probably the semester of school that most influenced my worldview and values around environmentalism, sustainability, and human impact. Not to mention, going to sea just fundamentally changed the way I think about the shape of the earth and how humans use it. Rich was a really enthusiastic, supportive, knowledgeable part of that, and I'm happy to be able to revisit WM academically, in however a ...more

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Apr 18, 2020 Mike Flannery rated it it was amazing

Great read! It scratched nearly every itch I had after reading "Moby-Dick." It also led me to other, more foundational, American whaling reads.

After reading Melville's classic, I wanted to know what he got right and what he got wrong when it came to chapters like Ceteology. I also had an underlying feeling much of the meaning of "Moby-Dick" sailed over my head due to my lack of seafaring knowledge. "Ahab's Rolling Sea" taught me what the state of science was during Melville's time, and how to s ...more

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Aug 12, 2020 Susan rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2020

August 1st is Melville's birthday, and probably should get more notice than it does so when I saw this i thought, wonderful someone is going beyond Ahab and seeing the book as a piece. That idea is strangely supported in the beginning as King argues Moby is a "proto Darwinian decentring of the human and the elevation of the whale." OK, I can buy that. Further, he says it is an "ecological fiction" that shows sympathy for the whale against the impersonal backdrop of the sea. Again, fine.

But then ...more

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Mar 06, 2020 Daren Girard rated it liked it

This is very interesting study of the "natural history" of Moby-Dick. The author reviews the marine science topics that underpin the novel and provides contrasts with the current evidence of understanding of them. It is well researched and thorough. The author talks about nineteenth century maritime navigation, sperm whale behavior, sharks, sea fowl, whaling, wind, storms at sea, among many others. It is fascinating to learn that Melville, himself a whaleman for a few years, really did have a de ...more

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Apr 07, 2020 Matthew Brady rated it really liked it

This book's title is somewhat deceptive, in that while it does look at the natural history element of Moby Dick, it is as much a march through Melville's work from the literature perspective, interspersed with the author's own commentary on environmental and humanity. As such, at many times it seemed to ramble and diverge into curious tangents. It was certainly informative from the biological and natural history perspective, but - based on the book's title - I was expecting it to be more focused ...more

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Aug 11, 2020 Simon rated it it was amazing

Shelves: natural-history, non-fiction, oceans, moby-dick

It may seem odd to review a non-fiction book this way, but the words that came first to mind were: Full. Kind. Generous. I read it while reading Moby Dick and found it extremely helpful in pulling together ideas and themes across that book - of course it's packed full of all kinds of fascinating oceanic and historical information - but also it was a joy to read, and the author's pleasure in his material was evident. ...more

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Apr 08, 2020 Deb rated it really liked it

Shelves: nautical, naturalist

Closely tracks the voyage of the Pequod and Ishmael's scholarly pursuits, and updates his narrations with modern day marine biology and environmentalism. Fascinating for anyone who loves the sea and its creatures, and of course, whales! ...more

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Aug 18, 2020 Heather rated it it was amazing

Loved this book! In addition to being informative and illuminating, it helped me FINALLY finish Moby-Dick. Really a wonderful armchair guide through marine science and the history of marine science/knowledge in Melville's time. ...more

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Feb 28, 2020 Mills College Library added it

Shelves: biology-new-books

813.3 K542a 2019

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Jun 08, 2020 Kerstin Ivonne Sy Tieng rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sea-adventures

I've read Herman Melville 's novel Moby Dick as part of my English subject in 9th grade. I love the thrill of the chase for the whale. This book "Ahab 's Rolling Sea" brought back the memory of my 9th grade years and reading about Moby Dick ...more

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About Richard J. King

Richard J. King

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Richard J. King is the author of Ahab's Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby-Dick, Lobster, The Devil's Cormorant: A Natural History, and Meeting Tom Brady. King has published widely on maritime topics in scholarly and popular magazines, he edits the website "Searchable Sea Literature," and he writes and illustrates a regular column on animals for the kids' section of Sea History magazine. Read ...more