Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and 
nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part 
of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I 
find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever 
I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral 
I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral 
principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s 
hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol 
and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. 
There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or 
other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce 
surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the 
battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were 
out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from 
thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand 
thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some 
seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the 
rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent 
up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the 
green fields gone? What do they here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! 
Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder 
warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling 
in. And there they stand—miles of them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets 
and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of 
the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?

Once more. Say, you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and 
ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic 
in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, 
set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. 
Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to 
be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for 
ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit 
of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand 
his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, 
and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands 
winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though 
the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd’s 
head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit 
the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is 
the one charm wanting?—Water—there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, 
would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving 
two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money 
in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul 
in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself 
feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? 
Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother 
of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, 
who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and 
was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable 
phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and 
begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. 
For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something 
in it.  Besides, passengers get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome—don’t sleep of nights—do not enjoy themselves 
much, as a general thing;—no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever 
go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook.  I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices 
to those who like them.  For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations 
of every kind whatsoever.  It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care 
of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.  And as for going as cook,—though I confess there is 
considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board—yet, somehow, I never fancied 
broiling fowls;—though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there 
is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will.  
It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that 
you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, 
aloft there to the royal mast-head.  True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar 
to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow.  And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough.  
It touches one’s sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the 
Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes.  And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand 
into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in 
awe of you.  The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires 
a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it.  But even this wears off 
in time.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks?  What 
does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament?  Do you think the 
archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks 
in that particular instance?  Who aint a slave?  Tell me that.  Well, then, however the old sea-captains 
may order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that 
it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical 
or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should 
rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas 
they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of.  On the contrary, passengers themselves 
must pay.  And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid.  The act of paying 
is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us.  But being 
paid,—what will compare with it?  The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, 
considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account 
can a monied man enter heaven.  Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle 
deck.  For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you 
never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his 
atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle.  He thinks he breathes it first; but not 
so.  In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time 
that the leaders little suspect it.  But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as 
a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police 
officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me 
in some unaccountable way—he can better answer than any one else.  And, doubtless, my going on this whaling 
voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago.  It came in 
as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances.  I take it that this part of 
the bill must have run something like this: “Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United 
States. whaling voyage by one ishmael. BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.”

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby 
part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short 
and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly; 
yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives 
which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the 
part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased 
freewill and discriminating judgment.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself.  Such a portentous and 
mysterious monster roused all my curiosity.  Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island 
bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand 
Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish.  With other men, perhaps, such things would 
not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote.  
I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.  Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to 
perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly 
terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world 
swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost 
soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow 
hill in the air.
