[This event is hosted by The Massachusetts Historical Society. Registration is free.]

**"So Wide a Chase": Melvillian Whaling in the Twenty-First Century Caribbean**
Tuesday, December 9, 2025 5:00-6:15PM **EST**

Registration link:
[https://www.masshist.org/events/so-wide-a-chase](https://www.masshist.org/events/so-wide-a-chase)
This seminar will be hybrid (in-person and virtual) and free to the public.

During the nineteenth-century, the era of *Moby-Dick*, Massachusetts-based whalers began to exploit the waters of the Caribbean, hiring aboard their ships local islanders who learned the skills and traditions of the trade. When American whaling ceased in the Caribbean during the early twentieth century, this history of shared labor inspired the creation of locally-directed whaling operations throughout the islands that have long outlasted the American whaling industry from which they arose. The paper to be discussed by Russell Fielding, Coastal Carolina University, places descriptive texts from *Moby-Dick* alongside photographs and descriptions of modern-day whaling in the Caribbean to illustrate the historical connections between these Caribbean whaling cultures and the New England whaling of Melville's day.

Registration link:
[https://www.masshist.org/events/so-wide-a-chase](https://www.masshist.org/events/so-wide-a-chase)
This seminar will be hybrid (in-person and virtual) and free to the public.

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