Yeh

So, I finished 'Moby Dick,' only about one year behind schedule. My thoughts on this topic run as deep as the ocean is blue, but no one will ever read this post because this blog is DEAD.

United States Navy v. Moby Dick

"Threats to national security are more important than possible harm to whales and dolphins, the Supreme Court ruled today in lightening restrictions on the Navy's use of sonar in anti-submarine training off Southern California despite its potential effects on undersea creatures.

• S.F. political family worse than dysfunctional 11.12.08

The ruling, the first of the court's 2008-09 term, accepted the Navy's arguments that the limitations would hinder vital exercises in the use of sonar to detect enemy submarines. The restrictions, imposed by lower courts, would have required the Navy to reduce or halt underwater sonar pulses when marine mammals might be nearby.

"Forcing the Navy to deploy an inadequately trained anti-submarine force jeopardizes the safety of the fleet," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. The resulting damage to the Navy and the public interest, he said, outweighs the injury that environmental groups that challenged the use of sonar might suffer from "harm to an unknown number of marine mammals that they study and observe."

The ruling - endorsed by six of the nine justices, and in part by a seventh - overturned decisions by a federal judge in Los Angeles and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco restricting sonar use during training exercises scheduled to end next month.

The court kept its ruling relatively narrow, however, and did not address the legality of an order by President Bush in January seeking to remove all legal restrictions on sonar by exempting the Navy from environmental laws. The judge in Los Angeles ruled that the order was invalid.

The case was also limited by the Navy's decision to challenge only two of the six restrictions on sonar use that the lower courts imposed. One unchallenged restriction, which remains in effect, bans the Navy from using sonar within 12 miles of the coast.

"It's gratifying that the court did not accept the Navy's expansive claims of executive power," said Richard Kendall, an attorney who represented the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups in seeking to maintain the restrictions.

Joel Reynolds, a lawyer with the same organization, said the ruling would have little effect on the Navy's one remaining anti-submarine exercise off Southern California. He also noted that the Navy is preparing an environmental impact report for future anti-submarine training, which he said had been the plaintiffs' main goal all along.

After 10 years of litigation, he said, "we have seen significant progress."

Navy officials declared victory.

"This case was vital to our Navy and our nation's security," said Navy Secretary Donald Winter. "We can now continue to train our sailors effectively, under realistic combat conditions, and certify our crews 'combat ready' while continuing to be good stewards of the marine environment."

The Navy has used sonar for 40 years in anti-submarine training off the Channel Islands and nearby coastal areas. Environmentalists say scientific studies show that sonar pulses damage the hearing organs of whales and dolphins, can interfere with their ability to navigate, mate and find food, and have caused whales to strand themselves on shore.

The Navy says its voluntary safeguards protect marine mammals. Those safeguards include the posting of lookouts and requirements to reduce sonar when vulnerable creatures are nearby.

But U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of Los Angeles said in an August 2007 ruling that the protections were "woefully ineffectual and inadequate" and would leave nearly 30 species at risk, including five species of endangered whales. She also said the Navy had failed to show that a mandatory buffer zone on sonar use and other restrictions would disrupt training.

Cooper's injunction was modified by the appeals court to allow commanders to reduce buffer zones at crucial times in training. The injunction has been in effect since March, affecting several exercises in a series that began in January 2007.

The Supreme Court said today that Cooper and the appeals court had given too little weight to the Navy's concerns.

Roberts' opinion quoted top Navy officials as saying sonar training under realistic conditions would be hindered by the two restrictions they challenged: a requirement that sonar be shut off whenever a marine mammal is spotted within 2,200 yards, and a requirement to reduce sonic pulses by 75 percent during conditions in which underwater sound travels farther than usual.

Judges must defer to those expert assessments, the chief justice said, especially because the Navy has conducted sonar training for four decades "with no documented episode of harm to a marine mammal."

Dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justice David Souter, said Cooper had properly used her authority under the environmental law after finding that unrestricted sonar use could harm thousands of creatures. Instead of conducting an environmental study as the law required, or asking Congress to change the law, Ginsburg said, the Navy undermined the law with a "self-serving resort to an office in the White House" for an exemption.

Ruling on whales and sonar

How the Supreme Court voted Wednesday in a ruling loosening restrictions on the Navy's use of sonar in anti-submarine training off the Southern California coast:

-- Majority: Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

-- Concurrence: Justice John Paul Stevens.

-- Partial dissent: Justice Stephen Breyer. He agreed with the majority that national security concerns outweigh possible harm to whales and dolphins from sonar use, but said buffer zones imposed by lower courts, with exceptions for critical points in the training exercises, should remain in place while the Navy completes an environmental study.

-- Dissent: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter (teh ghey whale lovers), who said the restrictions were validly based on evidence of potential harm to thousands of marine mammals."

Teh link

Tattoo Idea?

from Chapter 102:

The skeleton dimension [sic?] I shall now proceed to set down are copied are copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had been tattooed as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics.

That Blackness of Darkness

This excerpt, describing the ship during the late-night try works session, is one of the most compelling dark things I've ever read.

As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilised laughter forked upwards out of them like the flame from the furnace, as to and fro, in their front, the harpooners wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat around her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.

See also Conrad, Heart of Darkness:

He lived then before me; he lived as much as he had ever lived -- a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of the night, and draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision seemed to enter the house with me -- the stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between the murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular and muffled like the beating of a heart -- the heart of a conquering darkness.

The Abandoned Narrator

I just finished the book, and I liked the way it ended. Except for the Epilogue. Does everyone have the epilogue in their books? Apparently it was only included for later versions of the book.

I'm not going to give anything away in regards to the end, but I've been irked by the writing in regards to the missing narrator, Ishmael. The book starts off with a personal, first-person account of Ishmael's reasons to venture into the ocean on a whaling ship, and his steps taken to do so, including our favorite recountings of the bed he made with Queequeg.

However at an early point Ishmael as a self-aware narrator was entirely abandoned in the writing, or if you believe that Melville was still including him, he suddenly became omniscient and omnipresent -- hearing all conversations between Stubb, Flask and Ahab, present with the blacksmith and cook for their mutterings, and in the boat with Ahab -- yet perhaps NOT in the boat with Ahab.

I appreciated the knowledge gained by understanding why someone would suddenly decide to join up with a whaling ship, but was it really necessary in the writing to include Ishmael at all -- or Ishmael as first-person narrator? The book would only have to be slightly re-written to omit Ishmael and instead have a bodiless narrator--a telling sign on its own. The narrator does not mention much that would show the reader that he had self-awareness after the first couple of chapters. There is no mention of any of Ishmael's needs, desires, or sensations, though we hear about those of the other characters in the books (particularly Ahab towards the end).

So my question is, why include Ishmael at all? What was the point? Was Ishmael himself part of a later revision to the book, as was theorized for Ahab's missing leg? A note in my book on the critical excerpts has an interesting point that I will save until everyone has finished the book, so as not to give anything away. But when you get to the Epilogue, you'll start to see.

Thoughts anyone? I feel like I might have had more interest in the book and more attachment if Ishmael had been more present throughout, but then we wouldn't have gotten the whole story. So why did Melville include Ishmael at all?

Moby-Dick in the News

You know when you learn a new word, and suddenly you seem to see that word everywhere you look? Well, that's started happening to me with Moby-Dick. Today, for instance, I read this Andrew Sullivan post about an editorial in the Anchorage Daily News:

Gov. Palin and her husband were obsessed with [Palin's ex-brother-in-law, State Trooper] Wooten the way Capt. Ahab was obsessed with the Great White Whale. No Wooten, no peace.

Sunday night on my plane ride home from NYC, there was something wrong with the Virgin America seat-back TV, to where I could not watch The Real Housewives of New York City marathon. This was very disappointing, because Ramona is kind of hot and kind of reminds me of a cross between a middle-aged Kathy Lee Gifford, a skittish deer in the woods, and Britney Spears' mom, the White Oprah. It turned out alright though because I used the time to read the Esquire Big Black Book of $3,000 briefcases that you would be an imbecile to not buy immediately. {I just checked and the watch I wanted in there - The U-Boat - is $3,850. I haven't worn a watch since about 2004.} I also watched the TED talks of Brian Cox (the Large Hadron Collider) and Paul Stamets (6 ways mushrooms can save the earth), which were extremely fascinating. I started watching Amy Tan's TED talk, but had to quit when she said

And so I'm going to use, as the metaphor, this association -- quantum mechanics, which I really don't understand, but I'm still gonna use it as the process for explaining how it is the metaphor. So, in quantum mechanics, of course, you have dark energy and dark matter. And it's the same thing in looking at these questions of how things happen. There's a lot of unknown, and you often don't know what it is except by its absence.

(photo of four rubber ducks, arrow associating them with Warhol-esque 4 panel portrait of Tan- "the metaphorical universe: synenergy (sic) and what matters")

because this is just really dumb. Look, I don't understand quantum mechanics either, but the THING of using the fact that it is weird and hard to understand to try to bolster and justify any kind of ridiculous, anti-scientific New Age mumbo jumbo is one of the most annoying things going in the modern world of ideas. (See e.g. Oprah favorite Gary Zukov's The Dancing Wu Li Masters - A Bantam New Age Book - from 1979. Oprah loves mumbo jumbo.)

I also watched an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm from whatever season is happening or just happened. The downside was that I found out a major plot twist that happens between the last episode I had seen (season 4?) and now, but sometimes you have to spend money to make money. One of the jokes was that Larry was depressed, and one of his friends was telling his manager that he was like Mopey Dick. Moby Dick? The whale in the Melville book? No, Mopey Dick, like he's depressed and he needs to get laid.

I managed to spend the weekend in NYC in the apartment of two girls who had colds, drinking and staying up till the wee hours, and I didn't get sick until Monday morning. But when I went to bed last night I knew my fate was sealed. Today I cancelled my physical therapy session at 8:30 (that is, I didn't go to it). My calf is fine and I think I'll be ready to play in the kickball playoffs this weekend. But my motorcycle is in the shop and I decided not to take the hour-long bus ride to the refinery in order to infect my coworkers and get nothing done.

Instead, I got an amazing fruit danish at La new Boulange de Polk, and picked up a New York Times, the new National Geographic, and the New Yorker. As my friends all know and preemptively cringe at, I'll probably be a little obsessed with New York City for a couple of months, followed by at least five years of fond memories and vague travel plans. What a great town.

The National Geographic has an article on the Right Whale, the principle other whale, besides the Sperm, that was hunted by whalers in the 1850's. Its numbers in the North Atlantic have dwindled to about 350 adults, from 10,000 in the 1600's.

The New Yorker has a lot of good stuff in it, but (at left) was the only Moby-Dick related thing I saw on my first perusal. "Day 247, still no fingers."

-Hip E., p.399

On the Plane Ride Homes: Quotes

After re-reading Julius Caesar, I returned to reading Moby-Dick on the plane ride from Atlanta to SF and the read the following quotes, which struck me as awesome:

In the case of the Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine dish. The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump, whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings), they are mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess, in flavor somewhat resembling calves' head, which is quite a dish among some epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks among the epicures, by continuing dining upon calves' brains, by and by get to have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf's head fro their own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon discrimination. And that is the reason why a young buck with an intelligent looking calf's head before him, is somehow one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of reproachfully at him, with an "Et tu, Brute!" expression. (Chapter 65)

How wonderful is it then-- except after explanation-- that this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found glued in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved by experience
that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in summer. It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own. (Chapter 68)

As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale's head may be compared to a Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly rounded); so, at a broad view, the Right Whate's head bears a rather inelegant resemblance to a gigantic-toed shoe. (Chapter 75)

Kraken! Kraken! Kraken!

Did anyone pick up the reference to kraken?  I can't remember which chapter it was in (somewhere in the 50s or 60s) but the annotation in my book said something about Melville going on to write a book about the kraken later--I can't figure out if he actually did or not.  

I was amused to see the reference to kraken and realize that it's a common theme, not just some completely bizarre plotline for Pirates of the Caribbean (not that they would come up with something so original anyway...).  

Here's a clip from Youtube that talks about the monster from the deep that is the Kraken, as shown in Pirates of the Caribbean. Sorry it has little to do with Moby the whale, but I hope you enjoy. 

Teh Gheyest Book That Ever Sailed

"Of erections, how few are domed like St. Peter's!"

-Melville, Moby-Dick

-Hip E.

Craptastic

I was at the beach for 3 full days and did not read a single page of Moby Dick. That was dumb and teh ghey.

I ate some chowdah

It was okay.

What's the deal with the name "Moby-Dick"?

Turns out Melville based the name on a true story about a ferocious albino sperm whale named Mocha-Dick!!! The name originates from the whale's location off the Chilean island of Mocha and Dick was apparently selected as a random male name, like Tom or Jack, but Moby-Tom doesn't have the same ring to it.

Riddled with dozens of harpoons from his numerous escapes from whalers, Mocha Dick often attacked ships with premeditated ferocity. One of his battles with a whaler served as subject for an article, Mocha Dick: or The White Whale of the Pacific by explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds in the May 1839 issue of The Knickerbocker, New York Monthly Magazine. The article recounted the capture of a giant white sperm whale that had become infamous among whalers for its violent attacks on ships and their crews. Melville was familiar with the article, which described "an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength... [that] was white as wool". Significantly, Reynolds writes a first-person narration that serves as a frame for the story of a whaling captain he meets. The captain resembles Ahab and suggests a possible symbolism for whales in that, when his crew first encounters Mocha Dick and cowers from him, the captain rallies them thus: "'Mocha Dick or the devil,' said I, 'this boat never sheers off from any thing that wears the shape of a whale.'

Mocha Dick had over 100 battles with whalers. First noted (because of his color, and later for his wounds) in 1810, he battled whalers on a regular basis until 1859. He was described as being giant (even for a whale). He was covered in barnacles.

So Melville stole the name and the plot line from a true story recounted by Jeremiah Reynolds, but who's famous now, Jerewhatshisface?

The Present Status of Things

I am currently on Chapter 40 and, therefore, a bit off schedule. It appears that the second surge of my Shakespeare obsession is poorly timed: I spent the last week reading Antony & Cleopatra, watching two fulls versions of Hamlet, and one version of Julius Caesar instead of reading Moby-Dick. But, perhaps it was not all for naught! I'm sure you noticed too, but right after the informational chapters about whales and whaling ships, the style shifts to theatrical and the writing, in several places, all but certainly intentionally emulates Shakespeare. Take for instance, Ahab's "aside" in Chapter 37. When broken into iambic pentameter, it could double in tone and sound for Lear on the hearth, or Macbeth discussing "vaunting ambition" in his bedchamber:

This lovely
Light, it lights not me; all loveliness is
Anguish to me, since I can n'er [FN1] enjoy it.
Gifted with high perception, I lack the
Low enjoying power; damned, most subtly and
Most malignantly!

...

They think me mad--Starbuck does, but I am
Demoniac, I am madness maddened[FN2]!
That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend
Itself! The prophesy was that I
Should be dismembered; and-- Aye! I lost this
Leg. I now prophesy that I dismember
My dismemberer[FN3]. Now, then, be prophet
And fulfiller one.

___________
FN1: Contracted words like "n'er" were often used by versified dramatists to fit sentiments and words into the metered line.
FN2: "I am mad north by northwest" -Hamlet
FN3: "O, that we then could come by Caesar's spirit,/ And not dismember Caesar! But, alas,/ Caesar must bleed for it!" -Julius Casaer (II, i). Comparisons between slaying Caesar and slaying Moby-Dick?

John Bunyan

"Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the stalwart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl..." (Chapter 26)

A Christian writer and preacher, was born at Harrowden (one mile south-east of Bedford), in the Parish of Elstow, England. He wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, arguably the most famous published Christian allegory.... In 1658 Bunyan was indicted for preaching without a licence. He continued, however, and did not suffer imprisonment till November 1660, when he was taken to the county gaol in Silver Street, Bedford. There he was confined at first for three months, but on his refusing to conform or to desist from preaching, his confinement was extended for a period of nearly 12 years (with the exception of a few weeks in 1666). It was during this time that he completed his allegorical novel: The Pilgrim's Progress. He was released in January 1672, when Charles II issued the Declaration of Religious Indulgence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bunyan. yo

Cook, Vancouver, and Krusenstern

"She has explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cook or Cancouver had ever sailed.... They may celebrate as they will the heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cookes, your Krusensterns; but I say that scores of anonymous Captains have sailed out of Nanucket, that were as great, and greater than your Cooke, and your Krusenstern." (Chapter 24)

Captain James Cook (1728 - 1779) was an English explorer, navigator and cartographer, ultimately rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy. Cook was the first to map Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean during which he achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.

Captain George Vancouver (1757 – 1798) was an officer in the Royal Navy, best known for his exploration of North America, including the Pacific coast along the modern day Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Alaska, Washington and Oregon. He also explored the southwest coast of Australia. He was born in King's Lynn, Norfolk, in England.

Adam Johann Ritter von Krusenstern (1770 – 1846) was a Baltic German admiral and explorer in Russian service, who led the first Russian circumnavigation of the Earth. In Russia, Krusenstern is known as Ivan Fedorovich Kruzenshtern.

Wikipedia. Also: Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are dead.

Some Low Brow Humor

Here is a list of stupid things that made me laugh while reading:

1) When Ishmael describes how "...this sunken-eyed Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer." (Chapter 35 - The Mast-Head)

That Platonist, such a tease. Apparently the spermaceti he keeps talking about was named after the milky-white waxy substance found in the whale's head, which was originally mistaken for sperm. The name derives from the late Latin sperma ceti (both words actually loaned from Greek) meaning "sperm of the whale" (strictly, "sperm of the sea monster"). Spermaceti is found in the spermaceti organ or case in front of and above the skull of the whale and also in the so-called junk which is right at the front of the whale's head just above the upper jaw. The case consists of a soft white, waxy substance saturated with spermaceti. The junk is a more solid substance. Junk, HA! I guess the spermaceti actually gives the whale buoyancy somehow, but the ladies did spread it on their faces as cosmetics. Leviathan is a biblical sea monster referred to in the Old Testament. The term has become synonymous with any large sea monster or creature. In Modern Hebrew, it simply means "whale." Maybe you guys already knew all this, but I had to look it up on Wikipedia, where I also found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_whales.

2) When Stubb says, between fa's, la's, lirra's and skirra's, that things on the Pequod are getting about as "...gay as a frigate's pennant."(Chapter 39 - First Night-Watch)

Now that's pretty ghey.

3) When the DUTCH SAILOR says: "That's the way-- that's it; thy throat ain't spoiled with eating Amsterdam butter." (Chapter 40 - Midnight, Forecastle)

Either he is talking to the sailor giving him head or he is talking about pot butter. Not sure which, maybe somebody's footnotes could shed some light on this.

Chapters 36 through 40 read like The Sound and the Fury, or like a short story by Shark, emulating Faulkner. I like that style of stream-of-consciousness writing. Are there any other authors that switch between different characters' perspectives throughout their novels? Wikipedia tells me Joyce and Woolf come to mind. I am curious to see if Melville returns to that style or if we're stuck with old Ishmael for the next 94 chapters.

Schedule Revisited

As requested by Hip E.:

WEEK 1 (8/19-24): Chapters 1-13 (optional: etymology and excerpts sections)
WEEK 2 (8/25-31): Chapters 14-32
WEEK 3 (9/1-7): Chapters 33-45
WEEK 4 (9/8-14): Chapters 46-60
WEEK 5 (9/15-21): Chapters 61-81
WEEK 6 (9/22-28): Chapters 82-99
WEEK 7 (9/29-10/5): Chapters 100-121
WEEK 8 (10/6-12): Chapter 121-Epilogue

So is everybody past Chapter 46?

The Caves of Elephanta

"...What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seems to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here...." (Chapter 7)

The Elephanta Caves are the focal point of Gharapuri Island, which was renamed the Elephanta Island by the Portuguese, located in the Mumbai harbour off the coast of Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), India. The caves are thought to date back to the Silhara kings of the 9th through 13th centuries (810–1260).[citation needed] Some of the sculptures of this site are also attributed to the imperial Rashtrakutas of Manyakheta (in present day Karnataka), the Trimurti of Elephanta showing the three faces of Shiva almost akin to the Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh. This was also the royal insignia of the Rashtrakutas.... Other Rashtrakuta sculptures here are the reliefs of Nataraja and Sadashiva and the splendid sculptures of Ardhanarishvara.... Most of the sculptures here were defaced by the Portuguese, who used the sculptures as target practice in the 17th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephanta_Caves

The Eddystone Lighthouse

"...Get out your maps and look at Nantucket. See how it stands there, away off the shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse...." (Chapter 14)

The Eddystone Lighthouse is situated on the treacherous Eddystone Rocks, some 9 statute miles (14 kilometres) south west of Rame Head, United Kingdom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddystone_Lighthouse.

Czar Peter

"...But like Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of other countries, Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy..." (Chapter 10)

Alexeyevich Romanov (1672– 1725) ruled Russia and later the Russian Empire from 7 May [O.S. 27 April] 1682 until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his weak and sickly half-brother, Ivan V. Peter carried out a policy of Westernization and expansion that transformed the Tsardom of Russia into the 3-billion acre Russian Empire, a major European power.

Although failing to complete the mission of creating an anti-Ottoman alliance, he still continued to travel across Europe. In visiting Holland, Peter learned much about Western culture. He studied shipbuilding in Zaandam and Amsterdam. Thanks to the mediation of Nicolaas Witsen, mayor of Amsterdam and expert on Russia par excellence, the Tsar was given the opportunity to gain practical experience in the largest shipyard in the world, belonging to the Dutch East India Company, for a period of four months. The Tsar helped with the construction of an East Indiaman especially laid down for him: Peter and Paul. During his stay the tsar engaged many skilled workers such as builders of locks, fortresses, shipwrights and seamen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czar_Peter