Saturday, January 15, 2011

History of the Whaleship Essex

In July 1819, the Essex was one of over 70 Nantucket whale ships in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. At 87’ long and 238 tons displacement, she was quite small. But she had a reputation on Nantucket as being a lucky ship; throughout the last decade and a half, she had done well by her Quaker owners, regularly returning at two-year intervals with enough oil to make them wealthy men.

Over the course of four voyages her previous captain, Daniel Russell, had been successful enough to be given command of the Aurora, a new and larger whale ship. Russell’s promotion allowed George Pollard, Jr. (the former first mate) to take command of the Essex and Owen Chase (one of the boatsteerers … or harpooners) to move up to first mate. Three other crew members were elevated to the rank of boatsteerers. The Essex was not only lucky but an apparently happy vessel: According to cabin boy Thomas Nickerson, the Essex was “on the whole rather a desirable ship than otherwise.”

By the end of July, her upper works (about everything at deck level and above) had been totally rebuilt, including a cookhouse and a new layer of pine decking. At some point, immense block-and-tackle systems were strung from her masts to the wharf to haul her onto her side so her bottom could be sheathed in copper. This would protect it from marine growth that could turn her four-inch-thick oak hull planking into a soft, porous veneer.

At 20 years of age, the Essex was old and reaching a point when many vessels begin to show structural deterioration. Whale oil acted as a preservative, providing most whale ships with a longer life than that of typical merchant vessels, but rot, teredo worms and iron sickness (where the ship’s rusted iron fastenings weakened the oak) were potential problems.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Her Crew

Nantucket men preferred to sail with men born and bred on the island, but the "whaling capital of the world" could no longer supply all the manpower needed so captains were beginning to recruit "coofs," Cape Codders from the Cape or mainland. These men were usually inexperienced, hoping to learn the trade on their first voyage. Many of them were black men, seeking the relative equality they enjoyed aboard whaling ships.

Captain Pollard gathered his crew of 20 men into three whaleboats. After four torturous months at sea, five surviving crewman, all Nantucketers, were rescued by whaling ships off the coast of Chile. These five, and the three who stayed on the island, were the only survivors of the ordeal.

IN POLLARD’S BOAT (6 men):
Pollard took all Nantucketers into his boat which was found on 23 February by the American whaling ship Dauphin. Pollard and Ramsdell, barely alive, were also returned to Valparaiso. They were reunited in March on the USS Constellation, where the captain was told about the three men left on the Island.
  • Captain George Pollard Jr. (Captain) ~ Was born in Nantucket, the son of a ship’s captain. Pollard and the others on his boat made the same dreadful decision that Chase and his companions would eventually make. The whaling ship Dauphin rescued him on 23 February. He sailed only once more from Nantucket, as the Captain of the whaling ship Two Brothers. In March 1823, the ship was wrecked on a coral reef. Pollard returned to Nantucket a broken man, and served out 45 years as a night watchman.
  • Owen Coffin (Sailor) ~ Of the Nantucket Island Coffins. Faced with a long lingering death, the crew suggested they draw lots to see who should next be eaten, the unlucky candidate to first be shot by one of his companions. By a cruel irony, it was Pollard's 17-year-old cousin, Owen Coffin, who drew the shortest straw. Pollard at once said, “My lad, my lad, if you don’t like your lot, I’ll shoot the first man that touches you.” But Coffin was resigned to his fate. He said, “I’ll like it as well as any other.” He was shot on 11 February by childhood friend Charles Ramsdell, who drew the next shortest lot.
  • Charles Ramsdell (Sailor) ~ Was born in Nantucket, MA. The whaling ship Dauphin rescued him on 23 February. He captained the General Jackson on a successful trip before his retirement from the sea. Thomas Nickerson became a captain in the Merchant Service before retiring to run a boarding house in Nantucket.
  • Barzillai Ray (Sailor) ~ Of Nantucket. Died on 11 February and eaten by his companions.
  • Lawson Thomas (Sailor) ~ Died on 20 January. African American.
IN CHASE’S DAMAGED BOAT (5 men):
Chase had some Nantucketers, some “coofs” and one black man. Found by the British ship Indian. The three were taken to Valparaiso, Chili.
  • Owen Chase (First Mate) ~ Was born in Nantucket, MA. Rescued on 18 February by the British brig, Indian. Owen’s account, the Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex, was used by Herman Melville as one of the inspirations for his novel Moby Dick. He was appointed Captain of the Carroll in 1832 and made two very successful voyages into the South Pacific before retiring from the sea in 1840, partly due to ill health. For the rest of his life, he suffered from debilitating headaches, which seemed to owe their origins to the events of 1821. Towards the end of his life he became mentally unstable, and was found to be hoarding food in the attic of his Nantucket home on Orange Street. He died in March 1869, aged 71.
  • Benjamin Lawrence (Boatsteerer) ~ Of Nantucket, MA. Rescued on 18 February by the British brig, Indian. Went on to captain two successful whaling voyages aboard the Dromo and the Huron. Thereafter, he retired to the life of a farmer, and died in April 1879 at the age of 80.
  • Isaac Cole (Sailor) ~ From Barnstable, MA. Died on 8 February, 'in the most dreadful of agonies', in Chase’s boat. By now the food was almost gone and it was decided that they would use his body for food. Chase wrote, "We separated the limbs from the body, and cut all the flesh from the bones, after which, we opened the body, took out the heart, and then closed it again, sewed it up as decently as we could, and committed it to the sea." Both Benjamin Lawrence and Thomas Nickerson readily agreed, knowing that their food supplies were perilously low.
  • Richard Peterson (Sailor) ~ Of New York. Led them every day in prayer and whose hymns, sung in stronger days, had comforted them. Died 18 January 1851 'having made up his mind', as Chase later described it. He was buried at sea. African American.
  • Thomas Nickerson (Cabin Boy) ~ Was born in Harwich, MA. Rescued on 18 February by the British brig, Indian. His account, The Loss of the Ship Essex Sunk by a Whale and the Ordeal of the Crew in Open Boats, was lost until 1960. Its significance was realized in 1980, when it came into the hands of Nantucket whaling expert, Edouard Stackpole. It was published by the Nantucket Historical Association in 1984.
IN JOY’S BOAT (8 men):
Second mate Matthew Joy had a "coof" and the rest of the blacks. On 29 January his boat became separated from Pollard's and was never seen again.
  • Matthew Joy (Second Mate) ~ Of Nantucket, MA. Born 10 January 1851, Matthew was the first man to die. Chase maintained that he had been of a sickly constitution in any event, and that his death was as much due to that as the hardships of the voyage. His body was committed to the ocean the following day.
  • Obed Hendricks (Boatsteerer) ~ Of Nantucket, MA. Took command of the boat after Joy’s death. Never found.
  • Henry De Witt (Sailor) ~ Never found. African American.
  • Samuel Reed (Sailor) ~ Died on 28 January and eaten by his companions.
  • Isaiah Sheppard (Sailor) ~ Died on 27 January and eaten by his companions. African American.
  • Charles Shorter (Sailor) ~ Died on 23 January and eaten by his companions. African American.
  • Joseph West (Sailor) ~ Never found.
  • William Bond (Steward) ~ Never found. African American. 
THREE STAYED BEHIND ON HENDERSON ISLAND (FIRST THOUGHT TO BE DULCIE ISLAND):

A month into the voyage, they happened upon an unpopulated island where they were able to restock their food and water. Three men chose to remain on the island rather than face the open sea again. After 111 days on the island, they were rescued, but their stay on the island was not much better than those who were in the boats.
  • Thomas Chappel (Boatsteerer) ~ Stayed behind on Henderson Island. Rescued on 9 April 1821. An Englishman, Thomas became a missionary preacher and died of plague-fever on Timor island.
  • Seth Weeks (Sailor) ~ Of Barnstable, MA. Stayed behind on Henderson Island. Rescued on 9 April 1821 and continued on as crew member aboard the Surry, voyaging throughout the Pacific until they made their way to England and back to the United States. He eventually retired to Cape Cod, where he outlived all the other Essex survivors.
  • William Wright (Sailor) ~ Of Barnstable, MA. Stayed behind on Henderson Island. Rescued on 9 April 1821 and continued on as crew member aboard the Surry. He was drowned in a hurricane off the West Indies.

Leaving Nantucket, August 12th, 1819

Leaving Nantucket, August 12th, 1819 by Anthony D. Blake
This painting depicts the Essex sailing out of Nantucket harbor with a favorable breeze. The tide is going out, shown by the ripples on the water close to the end of Brandt Point. Behind Brandt point a large cutter has hoisted her mainsail in preparation to breaking out her anchor. Other whale ships are anchored in the harbor, or alongside the docks, in the background.

Following is an excerpt from Michael W. Pocock, 2005:

The Essex, a 238 ton whale ship, under the command of Capt. George Pollard Jr., had a crew of 20. The voyage was unlucky from the start. Only two days out of port they were hit by a squall, Two of the whaling boats were destroyed and the Essex received some minor damage.

They arrived at Cape Horn around the 18 December. Navigating around the Cape took some time. Rough seas, storms and unfavorable winds delayed them, but on 18 January they arrived at St. Mary's island then sailed to Massafuera off the Chilean coast. They began cruising off the coast of Chili and reportedly took eight whales, netting them some 250 barrels of oil.

The season now over in this area, they sailed for the waters off Peru. There the take was even better, as they reported a further 550 barrels of oil were collected. On 2 October they sailed for the Galapagos Islands where they could resupply with fresh water and turtles. As it happens, turtles were a very good and plentiful source of food for seafarers in those days. They lived for up to a year and required little food or water.

They departed Charles Island on 23 October. On 16 November, on a boat in which Owen Chase was commanding, a whale that had been harpooned used its tail to wreck the boat. The crew were all safely returned to the Essex.

On 20 November, another shoal of whales were spotted. The boats were lowered and the chase was on. Capt. Pollard in one boat and Owen Chase in the other. Chase struck the first blow. But the whale stove a hole in his little boat and Chase was forced to return to the Essex for repairs. It was then that the unthinkable happened.

While accessing the damage to his boat Chase noticed a large white whale some distance off the port bow. He thought it strange how the whale was just sitting there and spouting. Suddenly the whale (that Chase estimated to be about 85 feet in length) went under. The whale surfaced, and to Chase's astonishment, he was headed straight for the Essex. Chase estimated the whale to be moving at about 3 knots, the Essex was also moving at about that speed. Chase yelled out to the helmsman to put the ship hard up. But it was too late. Chase wrote in his narrative, "He gave us such an appalling and tremendous jar, as nearly threw us all on our faces." The crew must have been stunned at what had just happened. Nothing like this had ever been reported before.

But it was not over. The whale lay off the ship a short distance, also stunned, but not for long. Soon, Chase writes, "He was enveloped in the foam of the sea, that his continued and violent thrashing about in the water had created around him, and I could distinctly see him smite his jaws together, as if distracted with rage and fury." Chase was now preparing the boats in case they should lose the Essex. He noticed she was settling by the bow. Suddenly, he heard someone cry, "Here he is again-he is making for us again" Chase turned around and saw the whale heading directly for the Essex, this time with a renewed fury. Chase wrote the whale was bearing down on them at twice the normal speed. The great white whale once again crashed into the ship, this time the Essex was doomed. Chase wrote, "He struck her to windward, directly under the cat-head, and completely stove in her bows." The whale passed under the ship never to be seen again.

All 21 men were now adrift, over 1,000 miles from the nearest land, in the biggest ocean in the world. The Essex was still afloat so the men went back to salvage what they could. They took on as much water as was safe to carry along with bread and turtles. They also managed to make some sails for their tiny little boats. The captain calculated it would take several weeks to get back to South America. They had minimal provisions for about 60 days.

There is no way I can describe the despair they must have felt as the three boats left the wreck of the Essex. It took a month to reach Henderson Island. By the time they arrived they were almost dead. Starved and dehydrated, the men were elated to finally find land. The island was disappointing in the natural resources it had to offer. They did, after two days manage to locate a source of fresh water. But they knew the island could not sustain 21 men for any length of time. It was decided to take to the boats again. Three of them could not face this prospect and stayed on the island. The boats left Henderson on 27 December.

On 11 January Matthew Joy became the first man to die. His body was given to the sea. On the evening of the 12th Owen Chase's boat was separated from the other two in a storm. They drifted for several more weeks, getting weaker and weaker. On 8 February Isaac Cole died in Chase's boat. By now the food was almost gone and it was decided that they would use his body for food. Chase wrote, "We separated the limbs from the body, and cut all the flesh from the bones, after which, we opened the body, took out the heart, and then closed it again, sewed it up as decently as we could, and committed it to the sea."

Similar circumstances occurred in Pollard's boats. Four men had died and were consumed by the others. On 29 January the second mates boat became separated from Pollard's and was never seen again. Four men remained in Pollard's boat: Pollard, Owen Coffin (Pollard's cousin) Charles Ramsdell and Brazilla Ray. On 1 February they made an extraordinary decision ... they decided that one of them would be killed and used by the others for food. In a macabre scene the four men drew lots to determine who would die. It was Owen Coffin who drew the fatal stick. Pollard at once said, "My lad, my lad, if you don't like your lot, I'll shoot the first man that touches you." But Coffin was resigned to his fate, he said, " I like it as well as any other." Again lots were drawn, this time to choose the executioner. It fell upon Ramsdell, Coffins friend since childhood. Ramsdell fired a fatal shot, and soon nothing remained of Coffin. On 11 February, Brazilla Ray died, and he too was eaten.

On 15 February, the boat with Owen Chase, Thomas Nicholson and Benjamin Lawrence was finally found by the British ship Indian. The three were taken to Valparaiso, Chili. Pollard's boat was found on 23 February by the American whaling ship Dauphin. Pollard and Ramsdale, barely alive, were also returned to Valparaiso. They were reunited in March on the USS Constellation, where the captain was told about the three men left on Henderson Island. He arranged for the Australian ship Surry to sail for Henderson and recover the men. On 9 April, the Surry arrived on Henderson to find the men still alive. After 111 days on the island, Seth Weeks, William Wright and Thomas Chappel were rescued. Their stay on the island was not much better then those who were in the boats.

They all returned to Nantucket and soon their story was known by all. None of the men were ever censured for any of their actions (which had included cannibalism and murder). Surprisingly all of the survivors returned to the sea. Pollard became captain of another whaling ship, the Two Brothers. Ramsdell and Nicholson joined him on the voyage. However, this ship was lost on the rocks near the Sandwich Islands. Can you imagine the horror of the three Essex survivors when they had to take to the whale boats once again! Fortunately they were picked up the next day.

Pollard never went to sea again. He ended his life as a night watchman. It is said that on every 20 November he would lock himself in his room and fast in memory of those lost on the Essex.
Owen Chase became a successful whaling captain, but later in life his mental health declined. He became obsessed with food, buying everything in quantity, and having nightmares of starving to death.

Chase's two sons also became whalers, and it was William Henry Chase who gave a copy of his father's narrative to one Herman Melville. Melville was so moved by this manuscript that he used the story of the Essex as an inspiration for his book Moby Dick.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

A Great Read

Click HERE and read Shipwreck of the 'Essex' Whaleship: A Real-Life Moby Dick. Posted by Scott Phillips at www.Genealogy.com.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Wreck of the Whaleship Essex

Found at BBC.co.uk

The whaling ship Essex left Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1819 on a two-and-a-half-year voyage in the whaling grounds of the South Pacific to hunt the lucrative but aggressive sperm whale. In June 1821, 13 of the 21 crew were dead, and the eight survivors have entered maritime history as part of one of the most remarkable sea-faring stories ever told.

The Ship and its Crew

Both the Captain and the First Mate of the Essex, George Pollard and Owen Chase, had served on the ship's previous voyage. Due to the success of that voyage, both had been promoted. Pollard was, at only 29, one of the youngest men ever to command a whaling ship. Owen Chase was a mere 23. The youngest member of the crew was the cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson, who was only 15.

The Essex itself was an elderly ship, but had recently been totally refitted. At 87 feet long and weighing 238 tons unladed, the ship was small for a whaler. The Essex was fitted with four separate whaleboats, of around 20 to 30 feet in length, which were launched from the main ship. These boats were built for speed rather than durability, being 'Clinker built', with planks that overlap rather than lying flush with each other.

Ironically, the success of previous voyages had also left the Essex with a reputation as a 'lucky' ship.

The Voyage

Owen Chase
(Photo: Wikipedia)
The Essex set sail on 12 August 1819. Two days out from port, the Essex was 'knocked over' by a sudden squall. The ship lay completely on its side for several minutes before righting itself, and no permanent damage was done, but many of the crew took it as an ill omen. It was Owen Chase who persuaded them by a mixture of entreaty and bullying not to turn back.

The ship reached Cape Horn on 18 January 1820, but it took a grueling five weeks to navigate the treacherous waters. Even by the standards of the time, this was a difficult passage that must have had an effect on the morale of crew and officers alike.

Once in the South Pacific however, the Essex had an uneventful and prosperous voyage until 16 November. On that day, Owen Chase's whaleboat was struck by the tail fluke of a sperm whale and wrecked, leaving the Essex with only three serviceable whaleboats, though none of the crew was injured. Such happenings were common, but the loss of a whaleboat at that time was to prove crucial in events to come.


The Wreck

On 20 November, the Essex sighted a school of whales, and all three boats set off in pursuit. But Chase had bad luck again, as a whale immediately holed his boat. Cutting the line on the whale he had harpooned, Chase returned to the Essex to effect repairs. Unable to launch a new boat, as would normally be the practice, Chase quickly set about repairing the boat he had.

While he worked, Chase became aware of a huge whale, of some 85 feet in length, swimming in the water 100 feet away from the Essex. As he and the crew watched in alarm, the whale then proceeded to charge the Essex, and struck the bow of the vessel with sufficient force to knock some of the crew from their feet. The crew watched again in disbelief as the whale charged the ship a second time. This impact was hard enough to put a hole in the Essex below the water line. It is not clear why the whale attacked the Essex at all, though it seems likely that by pure chance, Chase's hammering on the deck may have sent signals through the hull of the ship to the whale.

Chase quickly realized that the ship was doomed. Within ten minutes, he and the eight men left the Essex on the whale-boat which was by now repaired, collecting what rations and supplies they could. By the time that they had collected their thoughts, the Essex had capsized. The whale was never seen again.

The Plan

When Pollard and second mate Matthew Joy returned to the Essex in their own Whaleboats, they were dismayed to find it capsized. Never before in the century-long history of whaling had any ship been attacked by a whale. However, survival was the most pressing concern facing the 20 men aboard all three whaling boats.

The Essex was righted by severing the masts, and further plundered for supplies and equipment. Once that had been done, the ship's Officers, Pollard Chase and Joy, set about formulating a plan to save themselves and their crew. After some discussion, Pollard settled on a plan to sail south to the area of 'the variable winds' and then east on those winds, making landfall on the coast of either Chile or Peru. The idea of sailing for possibly nearer islands in the South Pacific was rejected due to a fear of cannibalistic savages.

They estimated that the journey would take them some 56 days. For a voyage of that length, the provisions they had been salvaged allowed for a daily ration of some ounces of bread, a biscuit weighing one pound and three ounces and half a pint of water per man per day. This represented something like one third of the minimum required food intake and only a half of the minimum water intake for a healthy adult.

Survival

First, the crews were divided among the three whaleboats. Pollard and Joy took six men each, while Chase's boat had five crew assigned to it, this being felt sensible due to the fact that the boat was already damaged.

The three boats finally left the wreck of the Essex on the afternoon of 22 November, and by 4 p.m., the ship was lost from sight. Within days, Chase's boat proved to be a liability, and within three days, all three boats had to be halted in order that it could be repaired, as it was shipping water at an alarming rate.

By 30 November, however, the boats had made some 480 miles progress and the provisions were holding out much as expected. Pollard and Chase were encouraged by the way that the plan was proceeding. The men seemed in good spirits, under the circumstances, and all signs seemed to indicate that although they were hungry and tired, they might yet survive the trip.

On 20 December, land was spied, a small rocky outcrop that Pollard and Chase took to be Ducie Island. At first, the men took themselves to be saved, gorging themselves on food and water from the island. By Christmas Day, however, it was apparent that the island would not support all 20 men, and reluctantly, plans were made to return to the open ocean.

Three of the men elected to stay on the island and take their chances on land rather than on the sea. William Wright, Seth Weeks and Thomas Chapple gambled that their survival was more likely for three men on the small island than for 20 men in open boats. On 26 December, the 17 remaining crew set sail once again for the south.

The Horror

By this time, rations had been halved, and the men were severely starved and dehydrated. On 10 January 1821, Matthew Joy was the first man to die. Chase maintained that Joy had been of a sickly constitution in any event, and that his death was as much due to that as the hardships of the voyage. His body was committed to the ocean the following day. His boat was placed under the control of Obed Hendricks.

The day after Joy's burial, a brief squall separated Chase's boat from the other two forever. By this time, any effort beyond merely lying in the bottom of their boats was monumental, and the men could not muster the effort required to find their companions.

The First Boat


Thomas Nickerson
(Photo: Fold3)
Chase's boat proceeded south, as best they could tell, for a number of days. On 18 January, Richard Peterson died 'having made up his mind', as Chase later described it. He, like Joy, was buried at sea.

On 8 February, Isaac Cole died, 'in the most dreadful of agonies'. Rather than commit his body to the sea, Chase was moved to think the unpalatable, and proposed to his two remaining colleagues that the body be kept for food. Both Benjamin Lawrence and Thomas Nickerson readily agreed, knowing that their food supplies were perilously low.

The grisly supply of food lasted them until the 15 February, at which point all seemed lost. Nickerson had abandoned all hope of rescue when, on 18 February, the British brig, Indian rescued the three men.

The Second &Third Boats

After the separation of Chase's boat, the remaining two boats stayed together for some time. By the 14 January, however, Obed Hendrick's boat was entirely exhausted of supplies, and Pollard's boat finally ran out of food on the 21 January.

Lawson Thomas had died on 20 January, and Pollard and the others made the same dreadful decision that Chase and his companions would eventually make. However, worse was yet to come. On 23 January, Charles Shorter died. On the 27 January, Isiah Shepard died followed a day later by Samuel Reed. All were eaten by their companions in their desperate bid to survive.

On 28 January, the two boats were separated. The third boat, now containing only Obed Hendricks, Joseph West and William Bond, was never seen again. All three men are presumed to have died at sea.

On 1 February, Pollard's boat ran out of food again. Faced with a long lingering death, members of the crew suggested the drawing of lots to see who should next be eaten, the unlucky candidate to first be shot by one of his companions. At first, Pollard rejected the idea out of hand, but eventually gave way to his crew. By a cruel irony, it was Pollard's 17-year-old cousin, Owen Coffin, who drew the shortest straw, and was shot by Charles Ramsdell, who drew the next shortest. On 11 February, Brazillai Ray also died.

The whaling ship Dauphin finally rescued Pollard and Ramsdell, the sole survivors of their boat, on 23 February, 1821.

Chapple, Weeks and Wright were finally rescued from their island refuge on 5 April 1821. In fact, they had not been on Ducie Island, as supposed by Pollard and Chase, but on a small, unnamed island some 200 miles west of their supposed location. It is now known as Henderson Island.

Pollard and Ramsdell and been 95 days in an open boat; Chase, Lawrence and Nickerson for 90. They had travelled nearly 3,500 miles since the wreck of the Essex some three months previously.

Consequences

George Pollard sailed only once more from Nantucket, as the Captain of the whaling ship Two Brothers. In March 1823, the ship was wrecked on a coral reef. Pollard returned to Nantucket a broken man, and served out 45 years as a night watchman.

Benjamin Lawrence went on to captain two successful whaling voyages aboard the Dromo and the Huron. Thereafter, he retired to the life of a farmer, and died at the age of 80.

Charles Ramsdell captained the General Jackson on a successful trip before his retirement from the sea. Thomas Nickerson became a captain in the Merchant Service before retiring to run a boarding house in Nantucket.

William Wright was drowned in a hurricane while sailing in the West Indies. Seth Weeks alone seems to have immediately retired from sea-faring, retiring to Cape Cod. Thomas Chapple, an Englishman, seems to have become a missionary preacher, and died of plague-fever on Timor.

Owen Chase was appointed Captain of the Carroll in 1832. He made two very successful voyages into the South Pacific before retiring from the sea in 1840, partly due to ill health. For the rest of his life, he suffered from debilitating headaches, which seemed to owe their origins to the events of 1821. Towards the end of his life he became mentally unstable, and was found to be hoarding food in the attic of his house. He died in March 1869, aged 71.

Most of the survivors at some time or another wrote accounts of the disaster, some of which differ markedly on details of the character of the main players in the story. The best known is Chase's Narrative of the Most Extra-Ordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex, which was published in 1821. While whaling in the South Pacific, Owen's son William met a young whaler, and spoke with him at some length about the Essex, and gave a copy of his father's manuscript to the young man. That young man was Herman Melville, and it was Chase's narrative that inspired Melville's greatest work, Moby Dick.

Whaleship Essex Sinks

Found at MassMoments.org

In August of 1819, the whaleship Essex and its crew of 21 set sail from Nantucket on their way to whaling grounds in the South Pacific. It was a routine whaling voyage; the men expected to spend two to three years hunting whales and filling the ship's hold with sperm oil, then return to Nantucket to receive their share of the profits. The crew of the Essex was following a well-established tradition on Nantucket; the island's men had been going whaling for close to 100 years by the time the Essex sailed. The economy and the culture of the island was built on whaling.

Even as the Essex prepared to sail, however, the success of Nantucket's whaling fleet was gradually changing the nature of whaling. Nantucket men preferred to sail with men born and bred on the island, but the "whaling capital of the world" could no longer supply all the manpower needed. Captains were beginning to recruit "coofs," men from the Cape or mainland. These men were usually inexperienced, hoping to learn the trade on their first voyage. Many of them were black men, seeking the relative equality they enjoyed aboard whaling ships. But even at sea, white men in general, and Nantucketers in particular, received preferred treatment.

The other change that success brought to Nantucket's whalers was the slow depletion of the whaling grounds. As early whalers cleared the Atlantic of sperm whales, captains began to venture further and further from home in search of their prey. By the turn of the 19th century, whale boats were accustomed to traveling down the coast of South America and rounding the Horn to get to the whaling grounds in the Pacific. When the Essex left Nantucket in 1819, returning ships were reporting that the whaling grounds off Chile and Peru were exhausted. But there was a new possibility. The year before the Essex sailed, one adventuresome captain took his whaling ship further into the Pacific than Nantucketers had ventured before. He discovered what came to known as the "Offshore Grounds," which promised to yield a rich harvest of sperm oil.

This was where the Essex was headed when she left Nantucket. Just a few days into the voyage, the ship was nearly blown over when it was caught unprepared in a gale. Two of the five whaling boats were lost. The men, superstitious seafarers all, took it as a bad omen. They encountered several more serious storms — and precious few whales — during the next 15 months.

By the fall of 1820, the men had finally reached the fertile Offshore Grounds. They were one of the earliest whaling vessels to leave the safety of the coast nearly 2,000 miles behind and brave the unknown to reach the whales. They were sailing in what first-mate Owen Chase called "almost untraversed ocean." Untraversed by men but not by whales.

On November 20, as most of the ship's crew was out in whaleboats pursuing whales, the unimaginable happened. A huge sperm whale, a male over 85 feet long and weighing about 80 tons, deliberately charged the Essex and rammed her port side. Never before in the history of whaling had a whale been known to attack a ship unprovoked. The whale, momentarily dazed by the impact, surfaced and floated by the ship's side. According to the First Mate Owen Chase, the bull then swam several hundred yards away, turned, and raced toward the boat at an amazing speed of six knots. He struck the ship on the port bow, cracking and splintering the oak planking. Then the huge creature, continuing to work his tail up and down, pushed the ship backwards until water surged up over the transom. The boat began its descent; the whale disappeared.

The captain, returning to his ship, cried out in amazement to his first mate, "My God, Mr. Chase, what is the matter?" Chase replied, "We have been stove by a whale."

Captain Pollard gathered the 20 remaining crew members into three surviving whaleboats. Pollard took all Nantucketers in his boat; First Mate Chase had some Nantucketers, some "coofs," and one black man. The second mate's boat had a "coof" and the rest of the blacks. All three boats were in a desperate situation. They were about as far from land as it was possible to be. They had minimal supplies of water and food, perhaps enough to last 60 days if severely rationed. Believing that cannibals inhabited the closest islands 1,200 miles to the west, they chose to head south, parallel to the coast of South America, where they hoped to catch breezes they thought would carry them 1,800 miles eastward to Chile. With good winds, they estimated they might reach their destination in 56 days. The dangerous voyage began.

The bad luck continued. Frequent storms threatened to send the whaleboats to the bottom. As weeks wore on, the men began to suffer from hunger. Constantly exposed to the wind and sun, their thirst drove them to distraction. When their hard tack bread became soaked with salty seawater, they had to choose between feeding their starving bodies or increasing their thirst. A month into the voyage, they happened upon an unpopulated island where they were able to restock their food and water. Three men chose to remain on the island rather than face the open sea again.

The boats sailed on. Hunger and thirst returned. After three months at sea, men began to die. First was a sailor who probably was ill before the voyage began. His body was buried at sea. But the next men to die were the black men. Facing starvation, the survivors came to an almost unthinkable decision. They ate the dead men's bodies. Eventually, they resorted to drawing lots to determine who would die to provide food for the others.

After four torturous months at sea, five surviving crewman, all Nantucketers, were rescued by whaling ships off the coast of Chile. These five, and the three who stayed on the island, were the only survivors of the ordeal. Their tale of misery soon spread throughout the whaling world. A year later, Owen Chase's published narrative of the Essex appeared in bookshops. The story inspired another whaling man. Herman Melville later modeled the vengeful Moby Dick on the huge sperm whale that sank the Essex.