Mocha is an island. It is near Chile. Long ago, Spanish people lived there. Later the island was empty. The weather there is warm. The winter is like the summer.
A big whale lived in the sea near the island. Men called him Mocha Dick. A man called J. N. Reynolds wrote about this whale in 1839. His story was in a magazine, The Knickerbocker.
Sometimes the whale was quiet. He swam slowly around the ships. He did not hurt the boats. But the men did not like him. When a man hit him with a harpoon, a long spear, the whale fought. Often the men cut the rope. Then they ran back to the ship.
A newspaper, Het Parool, told a story about the whale in 1955. Three ships came. Every ship sent two boats. So six boats waited on the water. The whale went down. The men waited twenty minutes. Then the whale came up under a boat. One man saw him and shouted. The men rowed back fast. The whale hit only the air. He fell into the water with a big noise. Then an American boat came close. A man threw a harpoon. It went into the white skin. The whale turned. He took a British boat in his mouth. He shook the boat in the air. Three ships and ninety men went away.
Later, a writer made a famous book about a white whale. His whale is Moby Dick. The name comes from this real whale.
In Reynolds’s story, the men ate breakfast one morning. A man high on the ship shouted. He saw the whale. All the men stood up. The captain ran and asked where.