2010 Exhibit at Arrowhead- “The Man Who Lived Among the Cannibals”

In 1840, 21-year-old Herman Melville decided to go to sea for the second time. The family was left destitute by the bankruptcy and subsequent death of Herman’s father when Herman was 13. Taken out of school to work, he was erratically educated after that. By 1837, the nation was in a severe depression; what few jobs might have been available to him prior to then, now disappeared completely. In June of 1839, with the help of his older brother Gansevoort, Herman signed on as a “greenhand” (novice) on the merchant ship St. Lawrence for a round trip from New York to Liverpool. On his return, nothing came of his efforts to find work. Thus, December of 1840 found him in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Known as “the city that lights the world”, it was the center of the U.S. whaling industry. On Christmas Day, Melville signed on as a “greenhand” on the whaler “Acushnet”, a new ship under Captain Valentine Pease. Nothing from his past—not his earlier voyage, not his father telling tales of seven voyages to Europe, not stories from his several mariner cousins— could have prepared him for the world he was about to enter. Melville returned to his family after 31/2 years away. His life as a whaler, runaway, beachcomber, and Navy seaman inspired him to tell tales of beautiful, tattooed natives,strange taboos, and dangerous cannibals.Encouraged by his family to write and publish these stories, he did so, gaining immediate success as well as notoriety. He was, indeed, known as “the man who lived among the cannibals”. The exhibit invites you into the fierce, dangerous world of whaling and the wondrous, alien cultures of Polynesia through maps and photographs, as well as tools, weapons and objects from the BHS collection.