When Melville visited Nantucket, he and his wife, Elizabeth Shaw, lived in the Berkshires and were close friends with author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived nearby. Jake Rajs/The Image Bank/Getty Images Plus He wanted to preserve the scenery and town, so in the deeds to all his home lots, he required a public right of way through the village. Flagg, one of the island’s developers in the later 1800s. ‘Sconset’s Bluff Walk exists thanks to William J. The ‘Sconset Bluff Walk isn’t much more than a footpath along the bluff, but it passes some opulent summer homes beside the water-many of the residents in these homes tend to the path throughout the year-and culminates at Sankaty Lighthouse after a short jaunt on Baxter Road, because shoreline erosion has destroyed the last half mile of the trail. Visitors today should be sure to explore the rows of rose-covered, gray-shingled houses and the beach. ![]() Agatha checks the lighthouse mailbox every day for 17 years, hoping for a letter from her lost love. The village likely inspired a book he wrote but never published Melville wrote frequently to Nathaniel Hawthorne about the story, which centered around a woman named Agatha whose fisherman husband disappears. His journey to ‘Sconset was part of a carriage tour of the island. Melville visited the quaint village of ‘ Sconset, or more accurately Siasconset, on his trip, when the area was still rife with fishing shanties from the 1700s and 1800s (many of which have been turned into small cottages by now). ‘Sconsetįlickr, by Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism “To the islanders he was a nobody,” Melville later wrote, “to me, the most impressive man, tho’ wholly unassuming, even humble-that I ever encountered.” He mentioned Pollard again in his poem "Clarel": Later owned by Cap’t George Pollard, Jun’r of the whaling ship ‘Essex.’ Herman Melville spoke to Cap’t Pollard whose story was the basis for ‘Moby Dick.’” When the two men met, they only said a few words to one another-though that meeting alone inspired more work from Melville. Pollard’s house was on Centre Street (across from Ocean House), and today it has a plaque that says, “Built by Cap’t William Brock in 1760. Locals say that when Melville stayed at Ocean House, he would wave at Pollard from the front stoop as he tended the streetlamps at night. Captain Pollard's Houseīy the time Melville visited Nantucket, Captain Pollard (the captain of the Essex) had retired from whaling and was working as the town’s nightwatchman. Today, it’s still a hotel, owned by Nantucket Island Resorts. The Nantucket Historical Trust bought it that year and set about restoring the property. ![]() It operated until 1961 (minus a few years during World War II, when it was occupied by the Coast Guard). The following year, the Nantucket Steamboat Company bought the house and turned it into lodging, naming it the Ocean House. Jared Coffin, a successful ship owner from the island’s whaling heyday, built the house in 1845 as a family home. The duo’s room overlooked Captain Pollard’s house on Centre Street. ![]() They stayed at the Ocean House hotel, which is now known as the Jared Coffin House. Melville and his father-in-law, Massachusetts Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, traveled to Nantucket together. Jared Coffin HouseĪpril showers brought May flowers! post shared by Jared Coffin House on at 1:40pm PDT Now, 200 years after Melville's birth, visitors can follow the author’s footsteps through the town he immortalized in his writing. He visited the island afterwards, though, on a two-day trip in July of 1852, to explore the landmarks and meet with Captain George Pollard Jr., who captained the Essex. Interestingly, as well-traveled as Melville was, visiting places like Hawaii, England, Tahiti and Jerusalem, he hadn’t even been to Nantucket prior to writing Moby Dick. Moby Dick, published in 1851, wasn’t recognized for the masterpiece it is until the 1920s, when critics and scholars began to recognize its allegorical qualities about 19th-century American life. When Melville had a heart attack and died on September 28, 1891, he was a far cry from the famous writer he is today. The story fascinated him his entire life, and when he took to the sea himself-first, at age 20, as a cabin boy on a merchant ship sailing across the Atlantic and later working on whaling vessels, an adventure that got him caught by cannibals, arrested for mutiny, and eventually enlisted into the Navy- he formed a base level of experience to compose an allegorical novel about the event. In 1820, when Herman Melville was just a year old, a whale attacked the Nantucket whaling ship Essex, causing the captain and crew to be stranded for months and resort to cannibalism to survive.
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