вЂњWe have to work like horses and live like pigs,вЂќ wrote Robert Weir, a greenhand (or first-time sailor), in his diary. And as author Nathaniel Philbrick, one of the experts appearing in the film, said in a phone interview: вЂњItвЂ™s not as though the harpoon hit the whale and-poof-magically it was turned into a profitable commodity.вЂќ To effect that transformation required some of the most difficult and disgusting labor of any industry of the time. Men went to sea for any number of reasons-to make a living, to escape the law, to find themselves-but once aboard a whaleship, their job was to supply the rapidly industrializing Western world with oil for its lamps, candles, and machinery, and baleen for its parasol ribs, horsewhips, and corsets. It is a refreshingly clear perspective for those of us who may have thumbed quickly past the more technical chapters of Moby-Dick, or who imagine whaling through the narrow lens of those impressive painted and scrimshawed scenes of vicious whales smashing boats and tossing sailors in the air. danger, and exoticism.вЂќ Those brave enough to ship out on a Yankee whaler could expect to hunt the biggest game, explore new corners of the ocean and faraway lands, dally with foreign women, and hack to pieces and boil down behemoth carcasses.Д¬ourtesy of the New Bedford Whaling MuseumДЇor all the antiquarian nostalgia that risks tinting our view of the fisheryвЂ™s past, Into the DeepВ never loses sight of the simple fact that whaling was an industry-one of the largest, most profitable, and important businesses of its day, involving tens of thousands of workers at sea and on shore, and millions of dollars in annual investments and returns. tap into something very basic about human existence and experience,вЂќ вЂњa spiritual endeavor,вЂќ and a вЂњpeculiar combination of romance. This was before modern whaling technologies reduced the drama and heroics of the chase to mere assembly-line slaughter, when whaling still represented, in the words of several scholars interviewed in the film, a вЂњprimordial. During that time, Nantucket, New Bedford, and other port towns sent hundreds of ships all over the globe in search of leviathans. Drawing its central narrative arc from two of the most famous man-versus-whale tales of the era-the true, though at the time unthinkable, story of the Essex, a whaleship sunk in the middle of the Pacific by an enraged sperm whale, and the dark masterpiece it partially inspired, Herman MelvilleвЂ™s Moby-Dick-the film follows the history of the American trade as it evolved from the colonial practice of вЂњdrift whalingвЂќ through the so-called Golden Age, which lasted from shortly after the War of 1812 until the commercialization of petroleum after it was successfully drilled in 1859. Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World, a new American Experience documentary by Ric Burns, is alive with the all-or-nothing ethos of the nineteenth-century whaleman.

For the fictional crew of the Pequod, as for the real whalemen of the day, whaling was more mortal combat than straightforward hunt: Six sailors in a flimsy, open whaleboat, armed with only handheld harpoons and lances, pitting themselves at every opportunity against the singular terror of a true sea monster, the sperm whale, an animal that, when fully grown, could measure sixty-two feet in length, weigh eighty tons, and wield, to deadly purpose, a eighteen-foot jaw studded with seven-inch teeth. вЂњA dead whaleвЂќ was, of course, the desired outcome of the chase, but вЂњa stove boatвЂќ-a wrecked mess of splintered timber, fouled tackle, and flailing bodies-was just as likely. The call-and-response of AhabвЂ™s maniacal pep rally-a string of, as Ishmael puts it, вЂњseemingly purposeless questionsвЂќ with which the PequodвЂ™s captain stirs his crew into a bloodthirsty furor for whale-killing-culminates in what one scholar of American folklore has called the вЂњuniversal mottoвЂќ of nineteenth-century whalemen: вЂњA dead whale or a stove boat!вЂќ Like a seagoing version of the Depression-era bumper slogan вЂњCalifornia or bust,вЂќ the phrase pithily evokes both the marinersвЂ™ desperate dedication to the pursuit and destruction of their prey and the extreme risks they incurred in the process.

Carcass cry of fear