Tanner's salient point, though, is that America in the mid-nineteenth century was an ideal place and time to "generate its own epic and myth — in effect find its own Homer." A strong argument can be made for Moby-Dick's being the first great American epic in its length, its elevated style, and its treatment of the trials and achievements of democratic heroes or epic anti-heroes of national and cultural significance. Tanner treats this possibility in detail.
Perhaps more to the point, however, is the importance of time and place to the emergence of a great book about whaling. As Charles Olson points out (Call Me Ishmael, 1947; excerpted in Modern Critical Interpretations of Moby-Dick, edited by Harold Bloom), of 900 whaling vessels on the seas in 1846, 735 were American. Americans had been whaling since colonial days, but the industry peaked in the United States in the 1840s. Nantucket Island and New Bedford, Massachusetts, were the most important whaling ports in the world. Sperm oil alone was processed in excess of five million gallons per year.
Melville had served as a crewman on a whaler and knew the profession well. Among other accurate details, he discusses the length of a voyage (two to three years), life aboard ship, the number of open boats in a given chase, and the crews on those boats: usually one officer, one harpooner, and four oarsmen per boat. He is able to find comic relief in standard procedures such as the method of payment and the shore life of crewmen.
