Captain Pollard

And while he's walking those quiet streets, he has an encounter that feels almost too tragic to be real.

He meets a man named George Pollard.

Pollard was the real-life captain of the Essex.

the very ship that was rammed by the whale, the ship that forced its crew into cannibalism.

But Pollard wasn't celebrated as a tragic hero.

He was a broken man who had lost another ship after the Essex, had been exiled from the sea by the owners, and was quietly working out his final days as the town's humble night watchman.

Melville later wrote about that meeting.

He noted that to the islanders, Captain Pollard was a nobody.