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Calling All Ishmaels: Set Sail to New Bedford for the Moby-Dick Marathon

Moby-Dick is a really wonderful book, and if you've never read it, I highly recommend you do. Of course I'm not alone in my fondness for the story of Ishmael's travels on Captain Ahab's Pequod in search of the white whale. There's a whole community of Moby-Dick fans, and many of them are converging at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts right now for the 13th annual Moby-Dick Marathon.

About 150 volunteer readers will read passages from the 1851 Herman Melville classic, beginning at noon on Saturday and continuing overnight until around 1:00 on Sunday afternoon. Whether you're a diehard Melville fan or just too lazy to read and too cheap to buy the audiobook, you can show up to this free event and get your fill of 19th century whaling history.

While you're there, take a break from the reading to explore the rest of the museum, which has neat exhibits like the skeleton of a 45-ton sperm whale, a collection of whaling paintings and scrimshaw, and the world's largest ship model. And the town of New Bedford itself figures prominently in Melville's life, as the young writer shipped out from its port on January 3, 1841 for a stint on the whaling ship Acushnet, a journey that inspired him to write Moby-Dick.

[Photo: New Bedford Whaling Museum]

Related Stories:
· Moby-Dick, the Marathon [Official Site]
· The Life and Works of Herman Melville [melville.org]
· Melville's New Bedford [New Bedford Whaling Museum]
· Destination: New Bedford Whaling Museum [Jaunted]

Tags: Musuems / Animals / Whale Oil / → All Tags

Destination: New Bedford Whaling Museum

If you were that kid who stood under the giant blue whale at the Natural History Museum for a little too long, you have to check out the New Bedford Whaling Museum. The largest museum in the country dedicated to the history of whaling in America, it's one hour south of Boston.

The museum's got a ton of interesting exhibits going on, like a rearticulated 45-ton sperm whale that was found off Nantucket in 2002. Friday nights through October offer live music and the chance to roam the museum with a drink in hand. Check out the full-scale replication of an whaleship's forward section, or inspect old-school portraits of New Bedford during its whaling glory days.

Admission will set you back $10, a small price to pay to climb aboard a reconstruction of a whaling ship and learn facts you'll never remember, like the gem that a whale's ear is as big as a pencil tip and its tongue weighs more than a VW bug. The perfect adult field trip.

[Image via rinzable/Flickr]