Captain Boomer, played by James Robertson Justice in the 1956 film.

Captain Boomer is the commander of the English whaling ship the Samuel Enderby. Like Captain Ahab, he lost a limb to Moby Dick, a limb that has been replaced by a prosthetic of whalebone. In Captain Boomer’s case, it’s an arm.

Unlike Ahab, however, Captain Boomer is able to put this incident behind him and leave Moby Dick alone. Boomer jokingly tells a long yarn about the loss of his arm; this attitude, coupled with a lack of urgency in telling where he sighted Moby Dick, infuriates Ahab, leading Boomer to query, "Is your captain crazy?"

A BIT OF HISTORY

Moby Dick is the story of a great white sperm whale that fought back at whalers who tried to harpoon him. The idea came to Herman Melville after he spent time on a commercial whaler, where stories abounded of the sinking of the Essex in 1821 and Mocha Dick, a giant sperm whale that sank around 20 ships, before being harpooned in 1838.

Moby Dick has inspired a great many adaptations, the same basic story finding its way into the making of four films and two television adaptations.

In addition there are many comics and illustrated volumes, adapted from the original, one of which is the emerging graphic novel version of a large humpback whale called Kulo Luna.

Kulo Luna is not as big as the whales depicted in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, but she has a diamond encrusted heart of gold, only attacking whaling ships that present a danger to herself or her friends.

Herman Melville was the author of what we'd now consider an illegal activity, the commercial hunting of whales for oil and meat.

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