This paper investigates the history of a discursive figure that one could call the intelligent whaler. I argue that this figure's success was made possible by the construal and public distribution of whaling intelligence in an important currency of science – facts – in the preparatory phase for the United States Exploring Expedition (1838–1842). The strongest case for the necessity of the enterprise was New England whalers who were said to cruise uncharted parts of the oceans and whose discoveries of uncharted islands were reported in the local press. The document that stood at the core of the lobbying for an expedition was a table that newspaperman and public lecturer Jeremiah Reynolds had compiled after interviewing whaling captains in the country's principal whaling ports. Presenting whalers’ experience in tabular and synoptic form, Reynolds's table helped forge the figure of the ‘intelligent whaler’, a mariner who had better geographical knowledge than other seafarers. By investigating the paper technologies that produced the ‘intelligent whaler’, this paper shows how Reynolds's translation of ‘whaling intelligence’ from news into facts marks the beginning of the intelligent whaler's long career in US-American debates about expansionism, exploration and science.
Summary: Less ErroneousP ictures. Whalers' Knowledgei nN ineteenth-Century NaturalH istory,O ceanography, andL iterature.T hisp aper uses thei conoclasmo f Herman Melville's Moby-Dick as apointo fdeparture to examinet he problemo frepresentingwhalespictorially. Focussingonthe useofimagesincetologicalworks andwhalinglogbooks,the paperinvestigateshow thewhalers'knowledge, whichservedthe hunting, killing, andeconomicexploitationofwhales, cametobeinscribed in theantithetical work of naturalh istoriansw ho were increasingly interested in living organisms. This paperarguesthatMelville'sjuxtaposition of whalers' andnaturalists'knowledge runs parallel with adichotomy,alongwhich naturalhistories,travelogues,and thematic maps of oceanography constitute thewhale as an object of knowledge. It concludesbysuggesting that,a tt he same time,t hisd ichotomy is repeatedly undermined fort he sake of the whale'srepresentation.Keywords: naturalh istory,o ceanography, cetology, whales andw haling,l iteraturea nd science Schlüsselwçrter: Naturgeschichte,Ozeanographie,Cetologie,W aleund Walfang, Literaturund Wissenschaft Cetologische MedienproblemeDieR ezensenten,d ie im Winter 1851/52 dasn eueB uchd es Abenteuerschriftstellers Herman Melville zurH andn ehmen, sind unschlüssig: DerT ext, dend er Autorv on schlüpfrigen Südseeromanenu nd populärenM atrosengeschichten nunv orgelegt hat, "appears to be as orto fh ermaphrodite craft-h alff acta nd half fiction".S ol autetd er Befund im EveningT raveller ausBoston. Auch dieLiteraturzeitschrift To -day hat"acuriousmixture of fact andfancy"gelesen;die Londoner Literary Gazette "anodd book,professingtobeanovel";und dasvielzitierteU rteilimAthenaeum ausLondonlautet: "This is an ill-compounded mixtureofromance andmatter-of-fact."1 Währendsie die,fiction' sehr unterschiedlich bewerten, sind sich dieK ritikeri nd er Fraged er ,facts'e inig:" No book in theworld brings togethersomuchwhale."2 An derwalkundlichenExpertise,die in Moby-Dick zumA usdruckk ommt, besteht 1851, anders alsa ns eineml iterarischen Wert,k einZ weifel., Walkunde'm eint dabein icht nurd ie Naturgeschichte desW als: DasB uchverwendet etlicheKapitel aufdie enzyklopädische Erfassungdes Wals,der als Gegenstandder Jagd undder Wissenschaft ebenso Themawirdwie alsS peise, als Rohstoff, alsp olitisches Symbol unda ls einiges mehr.M elvilles Erzähler Ishmael,d er diese kulturhistorischeV ermessungv ornimmt, iste iner Wirklichkeit desW alsa uf derS pur F. Lüttge,H umboldt-Universitätz uB erlin,I nstitutf ür Kulturwissenschaft,U nter denL inden6
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This paper examines the network of media, institutions, and actors that helped create the sea as an epistemic object in nineteenth-century US naval administration. Based on paper technologies such as lists, tables, and logbooks, early oceanography was essentially an archival practice and data processing. In contrast to pelagic histories of the “oceanic turn,” this paper argues that oceanography developed as a science of the archive. It challenges a focus on geographic features in earlier analyses by showing that the ocean of oceanography is not only a body of water between areas of land but also a data space that transcends the boundary between land and sea.
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