speaking a whaler, homeward bound with a full cargo in Ruschenberger's 1848 journal and Moby-Dick

The Pequod meets the Bachelor (Frank Stella, 1988)

Remember the enviable Bachelor? Loaded with oil and homeward bound, The Bachelor is the happy whaler the depressed Pequod meets and "speaks" in chapter 115 of Moby-Dick:

And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing down before the wind, some few weeks after Ahab's harpoon had been welded.

It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged in her last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now, in glad holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously, sailing round among the widely-separated ships on the ground, previous to pointing her prow for home.

The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red bunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended, bottom down; and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw of the last whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and jacks of all colors were flying from her rigging, on every side. Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two barrels of sperm; above which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw slender breakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truck was a brazen lamp. 

Several descriptive details, highlighted above, of Melville's imagined encounter between the outward bound Pequod and homeward bound Bachelor are also found in the meeting between the outward bound sloop-of-war Plymouth and homeward bound whaler Aeronaut, as described in William S. W. Ruschenberger's 1848 journal.

Slightly revised, Ruschenberger's report of meeting the triumphant Aeronaut was printed in the June 1852 installment of "Notes and Commentaries on a Voyage to China," Southern Literary Messenger 16 (June 1852): 327. Transcribed below, the encounter with the Aeronaut as Ruschenberger originally described it in his manuscript journal entry for April 29, 1848:

U. S. Ship Plymouth at Sea April 29th 1848.  Latitude 18.15 South - Longitude 35° 49' West. Air 84° F.

A great event has happened to day in our cruise; nothing less than the first despatches from the ship since losing sight of the United States having been this day put on board the whaling barque "Æronaut" or "Argonaut," bound direct to New London, Ct. Our [?illegible word] were closed before twelve o'clock, and therefore, the latitude and longitude were guessed at. My Mary had directed to her a packet of three ounces, the postage on which will be some 68 cents; it will afford her [? illegible word or figure] months of reading, for it contains eleven sheets of diary, besides four or five desultory sheets on private matters.

When will the Aeronaut, [marginal note with carat: "Mystic"] reach New London? She has been now five months without seeing the land, has been absent thirty months, and has a full cargo of oil. She should be at her port at the end of 45 days, and you should get my packet about the 15th of June. And by the 1st of July, you will probably receive this also.

It was pleasant to see the excitement produced by the speaking this whaler, all sea-worn as she seemed; her sails thin and white; her bunting streaming bright, and the hull well sunk in the sea, indicating that she was full. A whale's jaw bones decorated the stern, and her whale-boats rested bottom upwards, between the masts, and at her main mast-head she wore a large black ball, one foot in diameter, fixed on a staff, which, it was said by [old? Fisher?], was a signal of triumph to other whalers that her cargo was complete.

When her commander answered to our hail, "bound to New London", and signified that she would receive a letter-bag on board, every body rushed to seal up their packets. And we all followed the boat with our eyes as she bore the little letter-bag (a very short distance to be sure) on its way to our home. I wished myself in the shape of a letter. I cannot tell how it was, that I at first doubted whether I would send my numerous sheets, & therefore, at the last moment, wrote two words in a sheet and directed it to you. Then, Gedney told Lt. Hunter who was sent in the boat, if the vessel was not bound directly home, to bring back the bag; I sent forward all at the last instant. How pleased you will be, I am sure, when the packet first reaches your hand, if it arrive as I hope before any thing sent forward from Rio. 

Citation: 

Ruschenberger, W. S. W. (William Samuel Waithman), 1807-1895. William S. W. Ruschenberger journal. 18 Feb. 1848 - 6 Mar. 1849. William S. W. Ruschenberger Papers. 0629-b3-fa. East Carolina University Digital Collections. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/2147.

I wished myself in the shape of a letter. As Ruschenberger tells it, the Plymouth crew intently and emotionally watched the boat transporting their letters to the homeward bound whaler. A poignant moment, the feeling of which Melville replicates in Moby-Dick at the close of chapter 115, "The Pequod Meets the Bachelor":

and so the two vessels parted; the crew of the Pequod looking with grave, lingering glances towards the receding Bachelor...

The business of the letter-bag in Ruschenberger's 1848 manuscript journal is hugely important for an understanding of how Herman Melville might possibly have got hold of said manuscript, or chunks of it, early enough to make use of during the writing of White-Jacket (1850). On apparent borrowings from Ruschenberger's 1848 journal in Melville's White-Jacket, check out earlier Melvilliana posts on the belaying pin incident and the flogging of John and Peter.

Ruschenberger's service aboard the USS Plymouth ended sometime in 1849; exactly when I am not sure yet, but certainly he was back home in Philadelphia by May 24, 1849. That's before Melville started writing White-Jacket, but then again, we need to allow for the time it takes to hand-write and distribute a fair copy.

But here's the great thing about Ruschenberger's journal entry, transcribed above. Ruschenberger as we learn "mailed" his first packet home on April 29, 1848 via the whaler Aeronaut. That first shipment contained eleven diary pages and more, including Ruschenberger's dramatic narratives about the belaying pin incident and flogging of John and Peter. Ruschnberger hopefully calculated this first installment would reach his wife Mary by June 15, 1848. He planned to send more pages from Rio in a few weeks, and, again hopefully, anticipated his wife's receipt of those (including the story of the encounter with the Aeronaut) in July 1848.

Thus,  even allowing for delays, Mary Ruschenberger would have received early parts of her husband's journal, and could have begun making legible copies as instructed, by September or October 1848. Without question, Melville wrote White-Jacket fast, "within two months, July and August 1849."  Voila! Plenty of time for Melville to have procured a copy in the early months of 1849, even before May 1849 or so when he started writing Redburn.

This feat of copying to which the manuscript journal itself physically testifies (count the instances of the word "copied" in the top margins) strikes me as remarkable if not miraculous, and existentially ironic.

Think of it! Mary B. Wister Ruschenberger, in the last months of 1848 or early in 1849, copying, or having others copy her husband Willie's manuscript journal, written at sea--already working away while Willie was sailing home.

Related posts: 

• 1848 Journal is digitized and online
• Flogging John and Peter
• iron belaying pins, flying in the dark

Flogging John and Peter in Ruschenberger's 1848 journal and Melville's White-Jacket

 Related posts at melvilliana: 

• 1848 Journal is digitized and online
• speaking a whaler, homeward bound
• iron belaying pins, flying in the dark

Now when you want to fight again, apply to me. -- Tom Gedney

I allow no man to fight on board here but myself.  I do the fighting. -- Captain Claret

 Earlier posts alerted Melville fans to

• the existence and online availability of WSW Ruschenberger's 1848 journal in manuscript; and
• Possible borrowings from Ruschenberger's 1848 journal for Melville's story in White-Jacket of Captain Claret and the flying belaying pins.

Today I want to transcribe another dramatic passage from Ruschenberger's 1848 journal, a flogging scene, which appears to have been used by Melville while writing White-Jacket (1850).

As mentioned previously, the belaying pin incident was censored and does not appear in the edited version of Ruschenberger's journal as printed in the April and May 1852 numbers of the Southern Literary Messenger.  But Ruschenberger's flogging narrative was published (with revisions and interpolations) in the May 1852 installment of "Notes and Commentaries on a Voyage to China," Southern Literary Messenger 16 (May 1852): 262-263.

Here is the scene as originally described by WSW Ruschenberger in his manuscript journal entry for April 12, 1848:

Wednesday April 12.  [18]48 Lat. 6. 17' N.  Long. 37. 58' W.  Therm - 81.

I am sorry to note that I am unwell today; but I hope that my indisposition will not pass over one or two days. I am really suffering from the heat, which you know my dear Mary is novel in me. You see we are advancing by the difference in the latitude and longitude between yesterday and to day. The crew has been exercised at "general quarters." Again, "all hands" were called to witness punishment. The subjects were negroes; two ward-room servants, one a stout athlete, remarkable for his strength, the other smaller, slender and in no respect above mediocrity in corporeal power. Peter, the smaller one, had been drawn into a dispute with John, the stout black, who struck Peter a blow, which was promptly returned—in short a fight came off between the two. John had been charged with stealing a pair of boots from one of the officers (or passenger Mr. Gibbs) and with selling them to one of the crew. The charge was admitted by the accused, who had admitted on a former occasion, he had stolen raisins &c. Several articles had been missed from the ward-room, & for this reason, the first Lt. suggested that John "should be made an example of."

When all hands were assembled, the two negroes were made to take off their shirts, and a cat o' nine tails was put in the hand of each. No reason for this proceeding was given to the assembled crew. The Capt. said "Now, you wanted to fight; go to work and lick each other." The big negro John used his cat pretty sharply, but Peter did not return the blows at first.  The Capt. cried, "Why the devil don't you use your cat," & then Peter returned the blows irregularly and without much effect. John held Peter's cat in one had and flogged him with the other. After two or three rounds to the great amusement of the spectators, who testified their approbation in shouts of laughter, the Capt. said "That will do: Now when you want to fight again, apply to me." — A grating was next placed on the deck, and John was seized up in the usual way, and the boatswain's mate struck him over the bare back twelve blows with the cat o' nine tails. Prior to the infliction the Capt. said "I suppose you know what you are to be licked for"— John replied affirmatively — "Go on with him, Boatswain's mate." This is a specimen of the brutal, bestial, silly manner of controlling men. The scene was one of amusement; as much as a bull-bait to a Spanish audience. And the very worst passions were appealed to.  I did hope to find more common sense, & higher notions of justice in the popular "Tom Gedney" — heaven save us. 

Peter Peppinger, poor fellow, got the worst of the fight, and the worst in the punishment, although clearly the least culpable of the two. His sense of right and wrong is violated by the act of a man whom he is bound to regard as a superior in mind, morals, power, &c. If he thinks at all, it must be to regard contemptuously the commanding officer's notion of propriety. John, too, must think that however just it might be to flog him for stealing the boots, it was not fair to give him an opportunity to flog Peter in public, after he had already beaten him in private. 

Citation:

Ruschenberger, W. S. W. (William Samuel Waithman), 1807-1895. William S. W. Ruschenberger journal. 18 Feb. 1848 - 6 Mar. 1849. William S. W. Ruschenberger Papers. 0629-b3-fa. East Carolina University Digital Collections.  https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/2147.

The flogging incident transcribed above from WSW Ruschenberger's 1848 journal seems to have supplied important details in Melville's treatment in White-Jacket of a flogging incident on board The Neversink. Below, compare select portions from Melville's account in chapter 33 ("A Flogging") of White-Jacket:

If You begin the day with a laugh, you may, nevertheless, end it with a sob and a sigh.

Among the many who were exceedingly diverted with the scene between the Down Easter and the lieutenant, none laughed more heartily than John, Peter, Mark, and Antone—four sailors of the starboard watch. The same evening these four found themselves prisoners in the 'brig,' with a sentry standing over them.

They were charged with violating a well-known law of the ship— having been engaged in one of those tangled, general fights sometimes occurring among sailors. They had nothing to anticipate but a flogging, at the captain's pleasure.

Toward evening of the next day, they were startled by the dread summons of the boatswain and his mates at the principal hatchway—a summons that ever sends a shudder through every manly heart in a frigate:  'All hands witness punishment, ahoy!'
* * *
At the summons the crew crowded round the mainmast; multitudes eager to obtain a good place on the booms, to overlook the scene; many laughing and chatting, others canvassing the case of the culprits; some maintaining sad, anxious countenances, or carrying a suppressed indignation in their eyes; a few purposely keeping behind to avoid looking on; in short, among five hundred men there was every possible shade of character.

* * *
'You John, you Peter, you Mark, you Antone,' said the captain, 'were yesterday found fighting on the gun-deck. Have you anything to say?'

* * *

John—a brutal bully, who, it seems, was the real author of the disturbance—was about entering into long extenuation, when he was cut short by being made to confess, irrespective of circumstances, that he had been in the fray.

* * *

Peter declared that he had been struck twice before he had returned a blow. 'No matter,' said the captain, 'you struck at last, instead of reporting the case to an officer. I allow no man to fight on board here but myself. I do the fighting.'

'Now, men,'he added, 'you all admit the charge; you know the penalty. Strip! Quarter-masters, are the gratings rigged?'

 * * *

The fourth and last was Peter, the mizen-top lad. He had often boasted that he had never been degraded at the gangway. The day before his cheek had worn its usual red, but now no ghost was whiter. As he was being secured to the gratings, and the shudderings and creepings of his dazzlingly white back were revealed, he turned round his head imploringly; but his weeping entreaties and vows of contrition were of no avail. 'I would not forgive God Almighty!' cried the captain. The fourth boatswain's mate advanced, and at the first blow the boy, shouting 'My God! Oh! my God!' writhed and leaped so as to displace the gratings, and scatter the nine tails of the scourge all over his person. At the next blow he howled, leaped, and raged in unendurable torture.

'What are you stopping for, boatswain's mate?' cried the captain. 'Lay on!' and the whole dozen was applied.

'I don't care what happens to me now!' wept Peter, going among the crew, with blood-shot eyes, as he put on his shirt. 'I have been flogged once, and they may do it again if they will. Let them look out for me now!'

'Pipe down!' cried the captain; and the crew slowly dispersed.

Obviously Melville's treatment is far more elaborate. Melville powerfully renders the cruelty of corporal punishment--so powerfully that his passionate indictment in White-Jacket was widely credited with helping to bring about the abolition of flogging in the navy. As in the narrative of the belaying pin incident, again we see a doubling of Ruschenberger's details. Two belaying pins for Ruschenberger's one. Not two, but four flogged men, adding Mark and Antone to the company of Ruschenberger's John and Peter.

Fighting is the grounds for punishment in both narratives. Fighting is also the punishment for fighting in Ruschenberger's account, as captain Thomas R. Gedney makes the offenders fight each other again before having them flogged.

Melville makes sailors of Ruschenberger's wardroom servants. Fascinatingly, however, the basic characters and roles of John and Peter as described by Ruschenberger persist throughout Melville's embellishment. Just as in Ruschenberger's narrative, John is portrayed as the stronger man, and the instigator of the trouble.  Melville goes ahead and calls John the "bully" he seems in Ruschenberger's account. Also as in Ruschenberger's narrative, Peter suffers the most, as if Melville took to heart Ruschenberger's remark that

"Peter Peppinger, poor fellow, got the worst of the fight, and the worst in the punishment, although clearly the least culpable of the two."

Ruschenberger emphasizes the amusement of the assembled sailors, calling attention to their laughter. The audience's unfeeling laughter compounds the brutality of the scene. But where Ruschenberger perceives only laughter and amusement, Melville takes pains to describe the variety of human responses to the flogging. As if offended by Ruschenberger's exclusive focus on the brutal laughter of common sailors, Melville makes a point of noticing far different expressions, indicative of sadness, anxiety, and suppressed outrage:

"...among five hundred men there was every possible shade of character."  

-- White-Jacket chapter 33 

As elsewhere in White-Jacket, Melville's long elaborate description of a flogging borrows heavily from Samuel Leech's book Thirty Years from Home, as Howard P. Vincent shows in The Tailoring of Melville's White-Jacket (see especially pages 90-97). The passage in Leech from which Melville borrowed describes the punishment of one unnamed "poor fellow" who was flogged for "the very sailor-like offence of getting drunk."  (Vincent, 90).

Leech gives the gruesome details that Ruschenberger leaves out. Melville appropriated many of these details as well as the outrage, the indignation driving Leech's indictment of "the brutal practice of flogging." (Vincent, 90).

But Leech lacks John and Peter, and lacks the backstory of fighting which Ruschenberger seems to have provided Melville, along with the complicated portrait of a loud and lame, intractable and troubled captain, the still popular Tom Gedney.

iron belaying pins flying in the dark

Related posts:

• 1848 Journal is digitized and online
• Flogging John and Peter
• speaking a whaler, homeward bound

As reported previously here, the 1848 manuscript journal of William S. W. Ruschenberger is now available online "for use in research, teaching, and private study."

To my mind, certain portions of Ruschenberger's journal appear to have been mined by Herman Melville in the writing of White-Jacket (1850).

The Plymouth

For example, take a look at the belaying pin incident in Ruschenberger's eyewitness account, reported while on board  the sloop-of-war Plymouth in the entry for April 3, 1848.  Significantly, there is no entry for April 3rd in the published version of Ruschenberger's 1848 journal, as originally printed in the Southern Literary Messenger 16 (1852).  The Southern Literary Messenger series "Notes and Commentaries on a Voyage to China" jumps from April 2nd in the April 1852 installment to April 4th in the May 1852 installment, and thus entirely deletes Ruschenberger's dramatic narrative of the events of April 3, 1848:

Monday April 3d.  Wind ahead.  This day completes seventeen years since the day of my commission as a surgeon in the navy.  Capt. Gedney plays whist every afternoon in the cabin with different officers of the ship and Lt. Davis.  To day three men were brought up for card playing on the berth deck, and Gedney stood up on his stick, cripple as he is, and counted off a dozen lashes to each one of these men for doing what he does every day.  In consequence of the Master at Arms having reported the card-playing by these men, an iron belaying pin was thrown at his head in the dark.  Fortunately the missile missed its aim.  The offender could not be discovered.  With a view to his detection, all hands were called on deck, and Gedney hobbled up to the capstan and made the following speech:

"Men — I suppose you all know what you are mustered here for — if you don't, I'll tell you — Somebody threw a belaying pin last night at the Master at Arms.  It was my intention to give you liberty at Rio; but I won't give you no indulgence until I find the rascal that threw the pin.  If I find him out, I will try him by a drum head court-martial, without waiting for any flag-ship, and whatever the sentence is, if it is five hundred lashes, or hang him, I will carry it out, by God — lick him or hang him, I'll be damned if I don't.  Pipe down, Mr Page." — This is a specimen of quarter deck eloquence, and of the effects of reading the bible on Sundays & attending church service.  How can a man compound with his conscience to act in this silly way.  Nay, this bare faced injustice is monstrous when we consider that Gedney sets an example and then flogs the men for following it.

Citation:

Ruschenberger, W. S. W. (William Samuel Waithman), 1807-1895. William S. W. Ruschenberger journal. 18 Feb. 1848 - 6 Mar. 1849. William S. W. Ruschenberger Papers. 0629-b3-fa. East Carolina University Digital Collections. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/2147.

The censored narrative which I have transcribed above from Ruschenberger's 1848 manuscript journal seems to have inspired Melville's portrait in White-Jacket chapter 42, "Killing Time in a Man-of-war in Harbor") of Captain Claret and that officer's response to an airborne belaying pin:

One other way of killing time while in port is playing checkers; that is, when it is permitted; for it is not every Navy captain who will allow such a scandalous proceeding. But, as for Captain Claret, though he did like his glass of Madeira uncommonly well, and was an undoubted descendant from the hero of the battle of the Brandywine, and though he sometimes showed a suspiciously flushed face when superintending in person the flogging of a sailor for getting intoxicated against his particular orders, yet I will say for Captain Claret that, upon the whole, he was rather indulgent to his crew, so long as they were perfectly docile. He allowed them to play checkers as much as they pleased. More than once I have known him, when going forward to the forecastle, pick his way carefully among scores of canvas checkercloths, spread upon the deck, so as not to tread upon the men— the checker-men and man-of-war's men included; but, in a certain sense, they were both one; for, as the sailors used their checker-men, so, at quarters, their officers used these man-of-war's men.

But Captain Claret's leniency in permitting checkers on board his ship might have arisen from the following little circumstance, confidentially communicated to me. Soon after the ship had sailed from home, checkers were prohibited; whereupon the sailors were exasperated against the captain, and one night, when he was walking round the forecastle, bim! came an iron belaying-pin past his ears; and while he was dodging that, bim! came another, from the other side; so that, it being a very dark night, and nobody to be seen, and it being impossible to find out the trespassers, he thought it best to get back into his cabin as soon as possible. Some time after—just as if the belaying-pins had nothing to do with it—it was indirectly rumoured that the checker-boards might be brought out again, which—as a philosophical shipmate observed—showed that Captain Claret was a man of a ready understanding, and could understand a hint as well as any other man, even when conveyed by several pounds of iron.

To be sure, at sea the iron belaying pin makes the handiest of weapons as any sailor or pirate knows.  Nautical literature is full of bludgeonings with belaying pins.  Nevertheless, consider the parallel particulars in the accounts of Ruschenberger and Melville.  In both narratives the incident happens at night, in the dark.  A belaying pin (or two, in Melville's telling) is sent flying in both narratives, in both accounts by the hand of an unknown assailant or assailants who are never discovered.  Moreover, the motives for the attacks are strikingly similar, having to with the enforced suppression of recreational games.  In Ruschenberger's 1848 narrative, the target of the flying belaying pin was enforcing Captain Gedney's unfair and hypocritical prohibition of card-playing.  In Melville's narrative, the hypocritical Captain Claret (who flogs sailors for drunkenness while tipsy himself) had prohibited checkers.  The big difference in the two accounts is in the reaction of the respective captains.  The belligerent and unrepentant Gedney vowed to flog or hang the unknown offender, but Melville's timid Claret is quick to change his mind and approve the playing of checkers, having been personally assaulted, twice.

Before getting too far along we have to consult Howard Vincent's essential study, The Tailoring of Melville's White-Jacket (Northwestern University Press, 1970). We need to know if Vincent located any source for the belaying pin incident in White-Jacket.

Whew!  At p. 123 Vincent does quote extensively from the passage in question.  And while Vincent does not identify Melville's source, he knows there is one:

When anything is "confidentially communicated," as he says this information was, to one of Melville's narrators, it is certain that a bookish source is the communicator.

And Vincent immediately goes on to say

Sources for the latter half of the chapter have not appeared.

 Hey, it's on and poppin!

On the same subject, check out Melvilliana posts on Flogging John and Peter and speaking a whaler, homeward bound.

Don't forget, as reported at Melvilliana in our inaugural message to the world, Ruschenberger's 1848 journal is digitized and online!

OMG, Ruschenberger's 1848 journal is digitized and online!

Some years back I had the pleasure of visiting Joyner Library at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina where I looked at the William S. W. Ruschenberger Papers.  Since that research trip I have been holding on to fifty pages of photocopies kindly furnished by the friendly and professional library staff from Ruschenberger's 1848 journal.  Incredibly, the whole thing is now available online "for use in research, teaching, and private study." 

Citation: 

Ruschenberger, W. S. W. (William Samuel Waithman), 1807-1895. William S. W. Ruschenberger journal. 18 Feb. 1848 - 6 Mar. 1849. William S. W. Ruschenberger Papers. 0629-b3-fa. East Carolina University Digital Collections. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/2147.

What's Herman Melville got to do with it?

Well, Melville in Omoo (1847) cites "Ruschenberger, an intelligent surgeon" of the navy by name, footnoting Ruschenberger's Voyage Round the World.

Ruschenberger in his article "Education in the Navy" for the Southern Literary Messenger (September 1850) at 524-526 quotes copiously (all of chapter 27) from Melville's recently published White-Jacket (1850).

In between Melville's footnote and Ruschenberger's borrowings (plus critical commentary), came Ruschenberger's 1848 voyage on The Plymouth with the colorful and controversial (and sadly alcoholic) captain Tom Gedney, and journal which Ruschenberger wrote in the form of letters home to his wife, Mary.  As the manuscript journal indicates, Ruschenberger intended for Mary to make edited copies of all his letters with the idea of publishing them in book form.

Ruschenberger's 1848 journal was copied, edited, and serialized as Notes and Commentaries on a Voyage to China in the Southern Literary Messenger (1852-1853).

Reading Ruschenberger's published "Notes and Commentaries" in the Southern Literary Messenger a long time ago, I noticed close correspondences to a couple of passages in Melville's White-Jacket.  Certain parallels were so close that Ruschenberger would have seemed a likely source, except that White-Jacket was written in 1849, three years before Ruschenberger's edited journal appeared in print.  Impossible, obviously, for Melville in 1849 to make use of Ruschenberger in 1852-1853.  From the other end, Ruschenberger was describing daily life on board The Plymouth and had no reason or need to crib details from Melville.

However, after going to Greenville and reading Ruschenberger's manuscript 1848 journal, and seeing the doctor's repeated instructions to his wife (along with the handwritten notation "copied" at the top of many pages), I realized that multiple copies of the 1848 journal, or parts of it, might have been circulating in the Boston area for months and months, even before Ruschenberger's homecoming and well before 1852-1853 when the Southern Literary Messenger published Ruschenberger's 1848 journal as "Notes and Commentaries on a Voyage to China."

So one question is, could Melville somehow have procured Ruschenberger's 1848 journal in manuscript form, perhaps one of the copies made according to plan by Ruschenberger's wife Mary, the former Mary B. Wister? 

Now that Ruschenberger's 1848 journal is digitized and online for research and teaching, I find myself freshly motivated to re-examine those weird correspondences to Melville's White-Jacket. Stick around, this should be fun.

Related posts: 

• Flogging John and Peter

• speaking a whaler, homeward bound

• iron belaying pins, flying in the dark