I've been rereading and relishing that other great American novel of the 19th century (besides Huck Finn), Moby Dick.
Unsurprisingly for a maritime themed story there are a lot of knife references.
At the beginning, when Ishmael is seeking lodgings in New Bedford and is waiting for his chowder in The Spouter Inn, he sees a sailor 'scrimshawing' one of the benches.
Supper'll be ready directly."
I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space between his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he didn't make much headway, I thought.
And although Queeqeg seems to like using the detached head of his Joseph Rodgers harpoon for EDC purposes, he apparently also carries a jackknife.
Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there quite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction some time. He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way.
When Ishmael is signing onto the Pequod, he is alarmed to see the two main owners Bildad and Peleg have a raging argument in front of him which quickly blows over.
As for Peleg, after letting off his rage as he had, there seemed no more left in him, and he, too, sat down like a lamb, though he twitched a little as if still nervously agitated. "Whew!" he whistled at last"the squall's gone off to leeward, I think. Bildad, thou used to be good at sharpening a lance, mend that pen, will ye. My jack-knife here needs the grindstone. That's he; thank ye, Bildad. Now then, my young man...
There's a description of scrimshawing in Melville's inimitable way:
As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With the same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark's tooth, of his one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not quite as workmanlike, but as close packed in its maziness of design, as the Greek savage, Achilles's shield; and full of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine old Dutch savage, Albert Durer.
Ishmael compares the skills of the ships carpenter to a Sheffield SAK predecessor:
He was a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one, must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, multum in parvo, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior though a little swelledof a common pocket knife; but containing, not only blades of various sizes, but also screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls, pens, rulers, nail-filers, countersinkers.
Ahab has a few different blades. Interestingly, given that sheepsfoot knives are associated with sailing, his own pocketknife is a hawkbill, which he uses as a pointer on his nautical charts as the Pequod approaches Japan.
And so Starbuck found Ahab with a general chart of the oriental archipelagoes spread before him; and another separate one representing the long eastern coasts of the Japanese islands Niphon, Matsmai, and Sikoke. With his snow-white new ivory leg braced against the screwed leg of his table, and with a long pruning-hook of a jack-knife in his hand, the wondrous old man, with his back to the gangway door, was wrinkling his brow, and tracing his old courses again.
And, although it's not strictly regarding knives, but more blades, what knife enthusiast could forget the fantastic Chapter 113, where mad Ahab and the ship's blacksmith, Perth, forge the ultimate harpoon - with a forgewelded haft out of the gathered nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses, and a barbed head out of Ahab's razors?
But now for the barbs; thou must make them thyself, man. Here are my razorsthe best of steel; here, and make the barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the Icy Sea."
For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would fain not use them.
"Take them, man, I have no need for them; for I now neither shave, sup, nor pray tillbut hereto work!"
Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and as the blacksmith was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to tempering them, he cried to Ahab to place the water-cask near.
"No, nono water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me as much blood as will cover this barb?" holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale's barbs were then tempered.
And I wonder how the very capable international bad guys missed the knife at the security checkpoint, when TSA seems to find lots of SAKs!
:thumbup:
