He tried to rescue the cabin boy who was just a 14-year-old teenager.

BBC: WWI generation

Then, in 1960, a notebook was found containing another Essex narrative, parallel with Owen Chase's, written by Thomas Nickerson, cabin boy on the ship and a crew member of Chase's castaway boat.

ECONOMIST: The cannibalism of the sea

Melville senior died when the boy was 13, leaving his family in genteel poverty, from which, seven years later, in 1839, the young Melville escaped as cabin boy on a merchant ship bound for Liverpool.

ECONOMIST: American writers

So you talked about the coming apocalypse to whoever would listen to your history teacher, who claimed he was building a survival cabin in the Poconos, to your boy who was stationed in Panama (in those days you still wrote letters), to your around-the-corner neighbor, Miss Lora.

NEWYORKER: Miss Lora