"Sperm whale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... divides into halves, one whereof is called Weather Bay, the other Lee Bay; while the volcanic promontories, terminating his coasts, are styled South Head and North Head. I note this, because these bays are famous in the annals of the Sperm Whale Fishery. The whales come here at certain seasons to calve. When ships first cruised hereabouts, I am told, they used to blockade the entrance of Lee Bay, when their boats going round by Weather Bay, passed through Narborough channel, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... ghost, encountering the first unknown phantom in the other world; neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the first time finds himself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the hunted sperm whale. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... often imprisoned by the ebb tide in the channels about Basra. The people harpooned them, and got much oil out of the brain, which they used for lamps, and smearing their ships. This also is clearly the sperm whale. (Ethe, p. 268.) ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... colonists soon learned that there was petroleum in what is now the State of New York; but New York was a long way from the Atlantic seaboard in those days, and they went on contentedly burning candles or sperm whale oil, or, a little later, a rather dangerous liquid which was known as "fluid." The Indians believed that the oil which appeared in the springs was a good medicine. They threw their blankets upon the water, and when these had become saturated with the oil, they wrung ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... Whale, On the Off-shore Ground in the Pacific, December 31st, . This Marble Is here placed by their surviving Shipmates. .. Sacred To the Memory of The late Captain Ezekiel Hardy, Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, August 3d, This Tablet Is erected to his Memory by His Widow. Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated myself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected by the solemnity ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville |
