Smith, Greg dot com

A couple of years ago I read an excellent book, which I highly recommend, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick (actually I've read three of his books and recommend all of them).

On November 20, 1820 -- 188 year ago today -- the whaleship Essex from Nantucket Island went through an ordeal that would partly inspire the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville...

The light-colored oil in the cranial cavity of sperm whales (which is actually where they derived their name, not because of their shape) lit the oil lamps of late 18th century America and Europe. Ships left New England harbors like Nantucket to hunt the whales across the Atlantic, but by the early 19th century there were no more sperm whales in the Atlantic (or at least not enough to hunt). So the men of Nantucket and the other whaling ports left on journeys they fully expected to take two to three years, rounding Cape Horn and chasing them out into the vastness of the Pacific. They would catch and render the whales and return home years later with, hopefully, cargo holds full of barrels of the precious oil.

The Essex left Nantucket Island in 1819. She was only 87 feet long, had a crew of only 20 men and boys with a 28 year old captain.

On November 20, 1820 she was in the middle of the Pacific, 2,000 miles west of the coast of South America. While it was unheard of for sperm whales to attack, the Essex was struck twice -- hard -- by a whale almost as large as the ship. This sketch from the time shows the relative sizes:

The ship sank. The twenty sailors boarded the three whaling boats, a type of long dory-style rowboat, and tried to navigate back toward land. After an ardous journey they landed on an uninhabited and uninhabitable rock called Henderson Island, in the modern-day British territory of the Pitcairn Islands.

On Henderson Island, the men gorged on birds, fish, and vegetation. They found a small freshwater spring. However, after one week, they had exhausted the island's natural resources, and concluded the island would not sustain them any longer. Most of the Essex crewmen got back into their whaleboats. Three men, however, opted to stay behind on Henderson. Excessive sodium in the sailors’ diets and malnutrition led to diarrhea, blackouts, enfeeblement, boils, edema, and magnesium deficiency which caused bizarre and violent behavior. As conditions worsened, the sailors resorted to drinking their own urine and stealing and mismanaging their food. All were smokers and suffered severe tobacco withdrawal once their supply ran out.
One by one, the men of the Essex died. The first were sewn in their clothes and buried at sea, as was the custom. However, with food running out, the men resorted to cannibalism in order to survive, consuming the corpses of their dead shipmates. Towards the end of the ordeal, the situation in Captain Pollard's boat became quite critical. The men drew lots to determine who would be sacrificed for the survival of the crew. A young man named Owen Coffin, Captain Pollard's young cousin, whom he had sworn to protect, drew the black spot. Lots were drawn again to determine who would be Coffin's executioner. His young friend, Charles Ramsdell, drew the black spot. Ramsdell shot Coffin, and his remains were consumed by Pollard, Barzillai Ray, and Charles Ramsdell. Some time later, Ray also died. For the remainder of their journey, Pollard and Ramsdell survived by gnawing on the bones of Coffin and Ray. They were rescued by the Nantucket whaling ship Dauphin 95 days after the Essex sank. Both men by that time were so completely dissociative that they did not even notice the Dauphin alongside them.

The book was gripping -- but grim -- and a quick read. Well worth it.

The story of the early American whaling industry is worth hearing. When we take a Walk Thru History trip to New England I'm thinking we'll definitely visit Nantucket. Until then, here's a clip from the director of the Nantucket Whaling Museum telling part of that story: