Case file · Cryptid
Mocha Dick, the white whale
Mocha Dick was a huge, pale sperm whale that whalers said attacked boats off Mocha Island, Chile, for years; according to Jeremiah Reynolds's 1839 account it was finally killed in 1838.
1838 CE · -38.38, -73.90 · status: account
The account
Reynolds published 'Mocha Dick: or The White Whale of the Pacific' in The Knickerbocker magazine in May 1839, describing a scarred, barnacled albino bull with many harpoons in its back. The story is one of the sources Herman Melville drew on for 'Moby-Dick' (1851). Mocha Island itself is in Mapuche tradition a place where the souls of the dead cross the sea.
The sceptical view
Reynolds's piece mixes reporting with storytelling, and several whales may have been merged into one legend. Albino sperm whales do exist.