| Feature Type: | Mountain - Mass of land prominently elevated above the surrounding terrain, bounded by steep slopes and rising to a summit and/or peaks. |
| Status: | Official |
| Name Authority: | BC Geographical Names Office |
| Relative Location: | In the Battle Range, S of Glacier National Park, Kootenay Land District |
| Latitude-Longitude: | 50°57'42"N, 117°24'23"W at the approximate centre of this feature. |
| Datum: | WGS84 |
| NTS Map: | 82K/14 |
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Origin Notes and History:
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Adopted 1 November 1963 on 82 K/14, as submitted March 1960 by S. Silverstein, Alpine Club of Canada (file D.1.45). Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office |
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Named in 1958-59 by the Silverstein-Anger climbing party (Canadian Alpine Journal, 1960, p.38), part of a suite of Herman Melville-related names. In Melville's famous book "Moby Dick", Captain Ahab sailed on the ship Pequod in search of his nemesis, the whale Moby Dick. Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office |
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In 1841 Melville sailed to the Pacific on board the Acushnet, which gave him much of the material for "Moby Dick". He deserted the ship when it reached the Marquesas Islands, was captured by cannibals, with whom he lived with for four months. This adventure was the subject of his first book, "Typee" published in 1846. Escaping captivity in an Australian whaler, the 'Lucy Ann', Melville was put ashore at Tahiti as one of the mutinous crew and later made the Society Islands, the subject of his second book, "Omoo" published in 1847. "Moby Dick; or, The Whale" one of the most famous novels in the English language, was first published in 1851, "....a complete practical failure, misunderstood by the critics and ignored by the public; in 1853 the Harpers’ fire destroyed the plates of all of his books and most of the copies remaining in stock [only about sixty copies survived the fire]. Melville’s permanent fame must always rest on the great prose epic of Moby Dick, a book that has no equal in American literature for variety and splendor of style and for depth of feeling." (Dictionary of American Biography XII, pp. 522-526). "Moby Dick is the great conundrum-book; is it a profound allegory with the white whale the embodiment of moral evil, or merely the finest story of the sea ever written?" (Grolier Club, 100 American Books). Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office |