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| Moby Dick, whale boat and crew |
Moby Dick (1956): Gregory Peck's best scene
TheGreat Gambino
I saw this movie when I was a kid, but I don't think I saw it when it came out, I would have only been five years old. In any case, I remember bits of it, like Ahab lashed to the side of whale, and Queequeg making a coffin that our hero used as a raft after their ship sank.
STEVE HAYES REVIEWS MOBY DICK (1956) 🐳 Universal Sea Epic with Gregory Peck & Orson Welles
Steve Hayes
At lunch yesterday Michael told us a tale about some problems they had when filming this movie. Steve Hayes covers them pretty well in the above video starting at the 5:24 mark.
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| Behind the scenes photo taken on the effects shoot of Gregory Peck caught up in the harpoon ropes on the mechanical full sized section of the whale |
Remember, this movie was made in 1956, and there was no computer graphics and no artificial intelligence. It was all made by hand. NZ Pete has a long page about the effects used to make this movie.
In this film Moby Dick was represented by a 75 ft long rubber inflatable weighing 12 tons, that required 80 drums of compressed air and a hydraulic system in order to remain afloat and operational.
I always thought Moby Dick was a fanciful tale concocted by some seaman's fevered imagination. Actually, no. There was a real whale cruising off the west coast of South America that sank over 20 whale boats (the small boats whalers used for hunting).
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| Mocha Dick By J. N. Reynolds |
Mocha Dick was a notorious male sperm whale that lived in the Pacific Ocean in the early 19th century, usually encountered in the waters near the island of Mocha, off southern Chile. American explorer and author Jeremiah N. Reynolds published his account, "Mocha Dick: Or The White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a Manuscript Journal" in 1839 in The Knickerbocker. Mocha Dick was an albino, and was the inspiration for Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. — Goodreads
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| 1619 copperplate engraving depicting the Dutch fleet of Joris van Spilbergen off the coast of Mocha Island, Chile. |
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| Mocha Island |
And let's not forget the Essex:
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| The Essex Struck by a Whale |
Essex was an American whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. On November 20, 1820, while at sea in the southern Pacific Ocean under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., the ship was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale. About 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) from the coast of South America, the 20-man crew was forced to make for land in three whaleboats with what food and water they could salvage from the wreck.
First mate Owen Chase and cabin boy Thomas Nickerson later wrote accounts of the ordeal. The tragedy attracted international attention, and it was one of the inspirations for Herman Melville's 1851 novel, Moby-Dick.
Project Gutenberg has a copy of Owen's story, and Goodreads has multiple entries:
Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex by Owen Chase
