19th-century weapon found in whale
Note that the weapon in question was manufactured in New Bedford, where Moby-Dick begins! How enchanting is that?
The weapon in the story dates to roughly 40 years after Melville's book (and the apex of whaling ships -- after the 1850s, the kerosene lamp put a permanent leak the demand for whale oil). However, think on this: the whale in this story was without doubt a contemporary of Melville, and might even have passed the author's ship on some silvery maritime midnight. (It would not have been hunted by the Pequod, as that ship's crew turned their noses up at all but the gold-standard sperm whale quarry).
I flatter myself that, if Melville were reading, he would comment with something to this effect: "O, deep, blubberous burial ground of harpoonish totems! Would but I had been buried there with you, in the heavenish flank of a worthy Leviathan, there to float past my mortal limits, and later to start the very eyes from the sockets of posterity!"
