The Island of the Colorblind

There may be as many as thirty thousand of these tiny biolumi-nescent creatures in a cubic foot of seawater, and many observers have attested to the extraordinary brilliance of seas filled with Noctiluca. Charles Frederick Holder, in his 1887 Living Lights: A Popular Account of Phosphorescent Animals and Vegetables, relates how M. de Tessan described the phosphorescent waves as ‘appearing like the vivid flashes of lightning,’ giving enough illumination to read by:

It lighted up the chamber that I and my companions occupied [de Tessan wrote J…though it was situated more than fifty yards distant from the breakers. I even attempted to write by the light, but the flashes were of too short duration.

Holder continues his account of these ‘living asteroids’:

When a vessel is ploughing through masses of these animals, the effect is extremely brilliant. An American captain states that when his ship traversed a zone of these animals in the Indian Ocean, nearly thirty miles in extent, the light emitted by these myriads of fire-bodies…eclipsed the brightest stars; the milky way was but dimly seen; and as far as the eye could reach the water presented the appearance of a vast, gleaming sea of molten metal, of purest white. The sails, masts, and rigging cast weird shadows all about; flames sprang from the bow as the ship surged along, and great waves of living light spread out ahead – a fascinating and appalling sight…

The light of Noctilucae in full vigor is a clear blue; but, if the water is agitated, it becomes nearly, if not quite white, producing rich silvery gleams sprinkled with greenish and bluish spangles.

Humboldt also described this phenomenon, in his Views of Nature:

In the ocean, gelatinous sea-worms, living and dead, shine like luminous stars, converting by their phosphorescent light the green surface of the ocean into one vast sheet of fire. Indelible is the impression left on my mind by those calm tropical nights in the Pacific, where the constellation of Argo in its zenith, and the setting Southern Cross, pour their mild planetary light through the ethereal azure of the sky, while dolphins mark the foaming waves with their luminous furrows.

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Although O’Connell’s story sounds more like a fantasy, it tallies with Melville’s experiences a decade later and William Mariner’s several decades before. Thus Finau Ulukalala II, the most powerful chief in Tonga, took a great liking to Mariner, a young English sailor who had survived the massacre of half of his crewmates in 1806. The chief appointed one of his wives as Mariner’s ‘mother’ and teacher, had him indoctrinated in the ways of the tribe, and then adopted him into his own household, giving him the name of his deceased son. Similarly, when Melville jumped ship in the Marquesas in 1842 and wound up in the valley of the Typee, the most powerful chief in the valley, Mehevi, adopted him, and gave him his daughter Pe’ue (Fayaway) as teacher and lover.