In late December 1840, adrift in his personal life, 21-year-old Herman Melville arrived in New Bedford, Massachusetts, preparing to embark on a South Seas whaling voyage. His diverse experiences and adventures in the course of the ensuing nearly four years would profoundly shape him and his writings. During this time, young Melville toiled as a foremast hand in the uniquely demanding and colorful social world of a whaleship on three different vessels and served for more than a year as a seaman aboard a United States Navy frigate. His odyssey took him to far-flung South American ports, the Galapagos Islands, Tahiti, and the Sandwich Islands. He lived among the indigenous people in the Marquesas Islands and witnessed the early impacts of colonialism and Christian missionary work in the Pacific world. This talk, A Whale Ship was My Yale College and My Harvard: Herman Melville’s Whaling Years, by Arrowhead docent and researcher Peter Hacunda will explore Melville’s life during the early 1840s, consider how it shaped him and why a whaleship truly was Melville’s Yale College and [his] Harvard.