当赫尔曼·梅尔维尔的小说《白鲸》于1851年出版时，读者普遍对这本书感到困惑。它的捕鲸知识和形而上学的内省的混合似乎很奇怪，但这本书的一点不会让读者感到震惊。

在梅尔维尔出版他的杰作之前，一头巨大的白化病抹香鲸以强烈的条纹吸引了捕鲸者和读者几十年。

摩卡迪克

这头名叫“摩卡迪克”的鲸鱼是以太平洋中智利海岸外的摩卡岛命名的。他经常出现在附近水域，多年来，许多捕鲸者试图杀死他，但都失败了。

据报道，摩卡·迪克杀死了30多人，袭击并损坏了3艘捕鲸船和14艘捕鲸船。还有人声称白鲸击沉了两艘商船。

毫无疑问，1841年乘坐捕鲸船Acushnet的赫尔曼·梅尔维尔（Herman Melville）对摩卡·迪克（Mocha Dick）的传说相当熟悉。

关于摩卡迪克的著作

1839年5月，纽约市一家颇受欢迎的刊物《尼克博克杂志》发表了一篇关于摩卡迪克的长篇文章，作者是美国记者和探险家杰里米·N·雷诺兹（Jeremiah N.Reynolds）。该杂志的报道是一个生动的故事，据说是一艘捕鲸船的古怪大副告诉雷诺兹的。

雷诺兹的故事值得注意，1851年12月《国际文学、艺术和科学杂志》对《白鲸》的早期评论在开头一句中提到了摩卡·迪克，这一点意义重大：

"The new nautical story by the always successful author of Typee has for its name-giving subject a monster first introduced to the world of print by Mr. J.N. Reynolds, ten or fifteen years ago, in a paper for the Knickbocker entitled Mocha Dick."

难怪人们会想起雷诺兹讲述的摩卡迪克的故事。以下是他1839年在《尼克博克》杂志上发表的文章的一些摘录：

"This renowned monster, who had come off victorious in a hundred fights with his pursuers, was an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength. From the effect of age, or more probably from a freak of nature, as exhibited in the case of the Ethiopian Albino, a singular consequence had resulted — he was white as wool! "Viewed from a distance, the practised eye of the sailor only could decide, that the moving mass, which constituted this enormous animal, was not a white cloud sailing along the horizon."

记者描述了摩卡迪克的暴力本质：

"Opinions differ as to the time of his discovery. It is settled, however, that previous to the year 1810, he had been seen and attacked near the island of Mocha. Numerous boats are known to have been shattered by his immense flukes, or ground to pieces in the crush of his powerful jaws; and, on one occasion, it is said that he came off victorious from a conflict with the crews of three English whalers, striking fiercely at the last of the retreating boats at the moment it was rising from the water, in its hoist up to the ship's davits."

除了白鲸可怕的外表外，还有一些捕鲸者没能杀死它，却把鱼叉卡在了它的背上：

"It must not be supposed, howbeit, that through all this desperate warfare, our leviathan passed [unscathed]. A back serried with irons, and from fifty to a hundred yards of line trailing in his wake, sufficiently attested that though unconquered, he had not proved invulnerable."

摩卡·迪克是捕鲸者中的传奇人物，每个船长都想杀死他：

"From the period of Dick's first appearance, his celebrity continued to increase, until his name seemed naturally to mingle with the salutations which whalemen were in the habit of exchanging, in their encounters upon the broad Pacific; the customary interrogatories almost always closing with, "Any news from Mocha Dick?" "Indeed, nearly every whaling captain who rounded Cape Horn, if he possessed any professional ambition, or valued himself on his skill in subduing the monarch of the seas, would lay his vessel along the coast, in the hope of having an opportunity to try the muscle of this doughty champion, who was never known to shun his assailants."

雷诺兹在他的杂志文章结尾用一篇长篇描述了一场人与鲸之间的战斗，在这场战斗中，摩卡·迪克最终被杀，并被拖到一艘捕鲸船旁边，将被切碎：

"Mocha Dick was the longest whale I ever looked upon. He measured more than seventy feet from his noodle to the tips of his flukes; and yielded one hundred barrels of clear oil, with a proportionate quantity of 'head-matter.' It may emphatically be said, that the scars of his old wounds were near his new, for not less than twenty harpoons did we draw from his back; the rusted mementos of many a desperate encounter."

尽管雷诺兹声称从捕鲸者的大副那里听到了一些传言，但关于摩卡·迪克的传说在他19世纪30年代被报道死亡后很久才流传开来。水手们声称，直到19世纪50年代末，当他最终被一艘瑞典捕鲸船的船员杀死时，他才撞毁了捕鲸船并杀死了捕鲸者。

尽管摩卡·迪克的传说常常自相矛盾，但似乎不可避免的是，有一头真正的白鲸会攻击人类。梅尔维尔的《白鲸记》中的恶毒野兽无疑是基于一个真实的生物。