Beachcombing

Nuva Hiva French Polynesia Marquesas Islands

I wrote a poem called "Beachcombing" after I had read, much to my surprise, that the first appearance of the word “beachcombers” in print was in Herman Melville’s memoir Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas in 1847. 

Melville used the term to describe a population of Europeans who lived in South Pacific islands, “combing” the beach and nearby waters for flotsam, jetsam, or anything else they could use or trade. We use the term in the same way today - though for less serious beachcombing for things like seashells.

That book was a follow-up to the commercial and critical success of his first book, Typee. It continued his tales of South Sea adventure-romances. Omoo is named after the Polynesian term for a rover, or someone who roams from island to island.

Omoo is about the events aboard a South Sea whaling vessel. It is based on Melville’s personal experiences as a crew member on a ship sailing the Pacific. They did recruiting among the natives for sailors. They dealt with deserters and even mutiny.

Melville's first-person account of life as a sailor during the nineteenth century and the exotic locales in Polynesia made the books popular. The two books found much greater success and sales than the later books, including his masterpiece, Moby-Dick.

Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life was Melville's first book, published in the early part of 1846. Melville was 26 years old. It is itself a minor classic of the travel and adventure genre. From it, Melville became known as the "man who lived among the cannibals."

It is about his time on the island Nuku Hiva in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands. Melville "supplemented" the story with some "imaginative reconstruction" and research from other books, as he did in most of his non-fiction and fiction. "Typee" comes from the valley of Taipivai, once known as Taipei. It was his most popular work during his lifetime.

I am not suggesting that Melville made up his adventures. Many of the events in the book were corroborated by Melville's fellow castaway, Richard Tobias Greene ("Toby") and an affidavit from the ship's captain corroborated that both of them did desert ship on the island in the summer of 1842.

The research is described by Melville as a way to supplement his lack of knowledge beyond his first-hnd experiences about the island culture and language.