“Nantucket!” exclaims Ishmael, the narrator of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851). “Look at it – a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background.”
In Ishmael’s description, this island off the coast of Massachusetts in the north east of the US is a depleted, weathered place, scarcely distinguishable from the sea. It’s a location for hard and dangerous work, too, as the inhabitants venture into the “watery world” offshore to catch everything from mackerel to whales.
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