Oberlus the Hermit
Details
Patrick Watkins was an Irish sailor who was marooned on Floreana, of the Galápagos Islands, from 1807 to 1809.
Watkins' fictionalized story is told in the ninth sketch of Melville's "The Encantadas" ("Oberlus the hermit"), where the character's "contorted" and "beast-like" appearance is associated with the monsters Despair and Caliban (from Spenser's Faerie Queene and Shakespeare's Tempest, respectively). He is also the model for the reptilian title character in Iguana (1982) by Spanish novelist Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa, including a movie adaptation (1988) of the same name.
The basis for these stories was first given by Captain David Porter's Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean (1815) and John Coulter's Adventures in the Pacific (1845).
For this meetup, we will read the following selections:
Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific by Captain David Porter, chapter 6, ~28pp:
Adventures in the Pacific by John Coulter, chapter 5, ~13pp:
The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville, "The Encantadas," ninth sketch, ~19pp:
- Annotated by the New Bedford Whaling Museum
- Kindle
- Gutenberg
- Google books
- Librivox 25m
Iguana (1988 movie):
- YouTube 1h40m
Extracts:
- "They who may be disposed to question the possibility of the character above depicted, are referred to the 2d vol. of Porter's Voyage into the Pacific..." ("The Encantadas")
- "Ere quitting Rodondo, it must not be omitted that here, in 1813, the U. S. frigate Essex, Captain David Porter, came near leaving her bones." ("The Encantadas")
- "Here be it said that you have but three eye-witness authorities worth mentioning touching the Enchanted Isles:—Cowley, the Buccaneer (1684); Colnet, the whaling-ground explorer (1798); Porter, the post captain (1813)." ("The Encantadas")
- "Here, in 1813, fell, in a daybreak duel, a lieutenant of the U.S. frigate Essex, aged twenty-one: attaining his majority in death." ("The Encantadas")
This meetup is part in a series on Muses and Monsters.