How Ships Say Hello to Each Other
Why the whalers are the friendliest
There are two kinds of people who love Moby Dick: people who are extremely into whales, and people who are extremely into literature.
Both types have a hard time explaining the treasures that they see.
In terms of the delta between “what I thought the book would be” and “what the book actually is” — Moby Dick hits the highest marks.
I expected boats plus something like Anne of Green Gables or Gone With the Wind or Little Women or Heidi or Tom Sawyer. I had read enough “classic books” to think I knew what I was getting into.
Every time I read a new chapter I am surprised by a new way this book is unhinged, as if it is trying to one-up itself. It is in a category of its own. It’s also brilliant.
If you were into whales, you will likely get more into literature from reading this book, and if you were into literature, you will get more into whales.
Moby Dick is a terrific book in part because of its terrific individual chapters:
Behold, these three in succession
Chapter 55 - Of the Monstrous
Pictures of Whales
Chapter 56 - Of the Less Erroneous
Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes
Chapter 57 - Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars
In Chapter 53, “The Gam,” Melville goes over the different ways that ships say hello to each other.
It would not have occurred to me to think that different types of ships have different protocols for saying hello to each other. When I think about it, this makes complete sense; you can go weeks without seeing another ship, and the other ship may have useful information.
Of course there would be some sort of protocols. I have included the relevant excerpt here:
The Gam
“So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the whalers have most reason to be sociable—and they are so. Whereas, some merchant ships crossing each other’s wake in the mid-Atlantic, will oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition, mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies in Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism upon each other’s rig. As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet at sea, they first go through such a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such a ducking of ensigns, that there does not seem to be much right-down hearty good-will and brotherly love about it at all. As touching Slave-ships meeting, why, they are in such a prodigious hurry, they run away from each other as soon as possible. And as for Pirates, when they chance to cross each other’s cross-bones, the first hail is—“How many skulls?”—the same way that whalers hail—“How many barrels?” And that question once answered, pirates straightway steer apart, for they are infernal villains on both sides, and don’t like to see overmuch of each other’s villanous likenesses.
But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable, free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another whaler in any sort of decent weather? She has a “Gam,” a thing so utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name even; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it, and repeat gamesome stuff about “spouters” and “blubber-boilers,” and such like pretty exclamations. Why it is that all Merchant-seamen, and also all Pirates and Man-of-War’s men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish such a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it would be hard to answer. Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows. And besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on.
But what is a Gam? You might wear out your index-finger running up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word. Dr. Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster’s ark does not hold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With that view, let me learnedly define it.
GAM. NOUN—A social meeting of two (or more) Whaleships, generally on a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they exchange visits by boats’ crews: the two captains remaining, for the time, on board of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other.”