Monday, June 25, 2007

Here are the promised pics from last Friday's New Bedford jaunt. Check out the original post to understand the context!


Cheesy antique store with a name you have to love



The infamous ship-shape pulpit in the Seamen's Bethel (yes, the chapel really existed in Melville's time, though the pulpit did not -- see related post)


The pew Melville sat in before he undertook his whaling voyage. Also note the scary cenotaph (commemorating the deaths of men at sea) noted in the sermon described in the chapter called "The Chapel"

6 comments:

Eric Little said...

Thanks for the pics. I wonder why that store is for sail, uh, sale? :)

I seem to remember Mapple's pulpit in John Huston's movie version of "Moby-Dick" as being twice the size of the one in your pic--it had to be, considering the size of Orson Welles's performance as Mapple. (I've had a soft spot for the movie ever since I saw it when it came out.)

Too bad that Melville never got that kind of recognition when he was alive.

Harry said...

Firmly agreed about the recognition.

Re: the pulpit, I don't believe this is the one in the movie. The movie, if I remember correctly, was shot elsewhere. The Bethel literature says they built this pulpit as a prototype, but because people seemed genuinely satisfied with it, they kept it, and spent the pulpit budget elsewhere in the temple. By way of justification, they remind the reader that they are only supported by donations. It's all rather sweet. The entire staff that day was an older lady retiree, who couldn't have been nicer.

emily said...

I believe the guides said the movie was shot in Ireland -- perchance England? (IMDB trivia says Father Mapple's sermon was filmed at Shepperton and Elstree Studios in England.)

On a sidenote, I dreamt last night that I was the owner and caretaker of a couple of whales....

Harry said...

Thanks for that clarification!

Adam Thornton said...

I haven't been dreaming about whales, but I HAVE been thinking a lot about them. It's amazing -- but not surprising -- that we know so little about Whale behaviour. After all they go places we can't go, and spend an awful long time there.

I've never wanted to see a whale before, but now I'd love to. I don't care whether or not it has a baleen, or barnacles, or how many blowholes it has...I just want to see the creature I've been reading about for a month.

Harry said...

Muffy,

I also had that same urge around the last half of MD. My betrothed and I are thinking about a whale watching boat trip this summer, though the likelihood we can make it is slim. But for a while there, we were both picking up every ad and news article and etc. that was connected to whales.

Do you know, while I was reading the book, I occasionally had the sensory illusion that I was smelling a salty wind and feeling the rocking of the waves? That Herman...