July 5, 2019 - Chapter Fifty-three


Following Ahab’s refusal to board the Albatross, our narrator shares some information about encounters between whaling vessels at sea. We’re told they engage in a “gam,” which is apparently a whaling term used to describe such a meeting.

Curious, I turned to the Oxford English Dictionary to find out something about this word. I append the definition here for your perusal. Note that the OED provides only a single example before Moby Dick.


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