In July, 1916, Chet Roscow is fascinated by news accounts of the great white shark said to be attacking people along the New Jersey shore not far from his home, but when he goes swimming in Matawan Creek he discovers the truth of the stories.

A revelation for Moby-Dick devotees and neophytes alike, Ahab's Rolling Sea is a chronological journey through the natural history of Melville's novel. From white whales to whale intelligence, giant squids, barnacles, albatross, and sharks, Richard J. King examines what Melville knew from his own experiences and the sources available to a reader in the mid-1800s, exploring how and why Melville might have twisted what was known to serve his fiction....