About book In The Heart Of The Sea: The Tragedy Of The Whaleship Essex (2001)
I had a lot of trouble with Moby Dick. Finishing it, I mean. I picked it up and put it back down twice. By the time I finally finished it - a point of honor - I'd probably read 1200 pages of it. About 150 years later, the source material was published. In the Heart of the Sea tells of the whaleship Essex which inspired Melville's opus. In 1819, it left Nantucket and went a'whaling. An enraged sperm whale (is there any other kind?) rammed the ship in the South Pacific. The Essex sunk and its crew took to the whale boats and set out for South America. 3,000 miles away. Nathaniel Philbrick is a brisk, lively, informative writer. His prose is engaging and witty. Unlike Melville's Moby Dick, this is a slim, quick read. The book starts in Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, which was a famous whaling port long before it became the part of the most famous dirty limerick of all time. Nantucket was a town of roof dwellers. Nearly every house, its shingles painted red or left to weather into gray, had a roof-mounted platform known as a walk. While its intended use was to facilitate putting out chimney fires with buckets of sand, the walk was also an excellent place to look out to sea with a spyglass, to search for sails of returning ships.Philbrick quickly limns the fascinating history of Nantucket, home to Quakers and whalers and a seafaring tradition. A vicious cycle dominated life in Nantucket: the men were home three months, in between voyages, and were then gone three months, spearing big dumb mammals for their oil. This was a hard life. Not only for the men, who were out getting attacked by sperm whales and cannibalizing each other, but also for the womenfolk, left behind. They were lonely and bored. In good Quaker fashion, many of the women developed opium addictions. Philbrick also notes the fascinating discovery of a six-inch plaster dildo in the chimney of one of the old houses.* *History is the best, isn't it? After learning about shore life, we get right into life aboard ship. Philbrick describes what it took to hunt whale (as opposed to hunting manatee, which requires different techniques): [T:]he mate or captain stood at the steering oar in the stern of the whaleboat while the boatsteerer manned the forward-most, or harpooner's oar. Aft of the boatsteerer was the bow oarsman, usually the most experienced foremast hand in the boat. Once the whale had been harpooned, it was his job to lead the crew in pulling in the whale line. Next was the midships oarsman, who worked the longest and heaviest of the lateral oars - up to eighteen feet long and forty-five pounds. Next was the tub oarsman. He managed the two tubs of whale line. It was his job to wet the line with a small bucketlike container, called a piggin, once the whale was harpooned. This wetting prevented the line from burning from the friction as it ran around the loggerhead, an upright post mounted on the stern of the boat. Aft of the tub oarsman was the after oarsman. He was usually the lightest of the crew, and it was his job to make sure the whale line didn't tangle as it was hauled back into the boat.After reading Philbrick's clean descriptions, I think I actually started to understand Moby Dick. Soon enough, the whale attacks: Chase estimated that the whale was traveling at six knots when it struck the Essex the second time and that the ship was traveling at three knots. To bring the Essex to a complete standstill, the whale, whose mass was roughly a third of the ship's, would have to be moving at more than three times the speed of the ship, at least nine knots.The Essex sank, but unlike the Pequod, which disappeared quickly beneath "the great shroud of the sea" that "rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago," the Essex went down slowly. It gave Captain Pollard and his crew time to offload the ship and stock supplies in the whaleboats. They got hardtack, fresh water, a musket, pistols and gun powder. There were 20 men in three boats. Fearing cannibals (how ironic), the displaced crew of the Essex attempted to row to South America. This was a mistake, which Philbrick places in the lap of Captain George Pollard. Pollard's behavior, after both the knockdown and the whale attack, indicates that he lacked the resolve to overrule his two younger and less experienced officers. In his deference to others, Pollard was conducting himself less like a captain and more like the veteran mate described by the Nantucketer William H. Macy: "[H:]e had no lungs to blow his own trumpet, and sometimes distrusted his own powers, though generally found equal to any emergency after it arose. This want of confidence sometimes led him to hesitate, where a more impulsive or less thoughtful man would act at once." Of course, the great hook in this story, the reason that we really, secretly, actually care this took place, is the cannibalism. At first, the men who died - in a tortuous fashion, dehydrated and starving beneath a blazing sun - were buried at sea. However, with circumstances becoming direr (as though it were possible), lots were drawn. It was young Owen Coffin who was the first to die, "dispatched" by his friend Charles Ramsdell. Odd, for a book this detailed, the scenes of cannibalism are fairly discrete (see Neil Hanson's The Custom of the Sea if you really want to learn about drawing lots and eating your friends). Eventually, 8 of 20 men survived. Five on an island; three on a boat. Philbrick tells their story well. He is a the rare, serious historian (the book had really good notes; very informative, though not pinpointed) that also knows how to write.
Got this book last year as a gift from G. As a sometime New Englander, frequent visitor to Mystic Seaport, and admirer of Melville, this book was right up my alley. I read the whole thing through on a recent cross-country flight.At the age of 28, George Pollard set out in command of the whaleship "Essex." He had a brilliant reputation, he had the firm trust of the ship's owners, and he had two dozen able and dutiful crewmen ready to follow his orders for endless months at sea killing whales and rendering their flesh into valuable oil. Two years later, he was found in a whaleboat with one of his crew, drifting near South America, delirious and near death. He had lost his ship in a bizarre incident in which it was attacked by a whale. He had lost his crew during terrifying weeks at sea in small boats. He and the other survivors had fallen to cannibalism, eating their fellows as they died of starvation. Not only that, but one of the dead was his own nephew, whom he had sworn to protect! And not only that, but the rescuers found the two men gnawing desperately on the marrow-bones, which they refused to let go of, as if they were the most precious thing possible! It is hard to imagine a more vivid example of how the hazards of seafaring could drag a man down from the peaks of success. And that is why the history of sailing holds such a great fascination, because it presented such harsh challenges to the men who sailed, in a way that starkly tested the men's character.Melville grasped how the roles of the men on a whaler serve as archetypes for qualities of leadership, courage and duty. It is the conflicts between Ahab, Starbuck, the harpooneers and and the crew, reflected in the greater conflict between duty and ontology, that give "Moby Dick" its power. In Philbrick's analysis, the fate of the "Essex" and its survivors were determined by the character and conflicts among captain Pollard, first mate Chase and a few of the crew. While the first mate was too self-sure, the captain was too diffident, and sought consensus with his subordinates when he should have issued orders based on his own opinion. Most critically, Pollard followed the mates' wishes in sailing the whaleboats against the wind towards South America, rather than with the wind towards Tahiti. They were afraid to find cannibals in Tahiti, and the captain thought they were wrong but didn't know enough facts to argue them down. The irony of their own eventual cannibalism is evident. And yet the headstrong first mate led the men better in his own little boat, and saved more of them, than did the captain. The counter-examples to the "Essex" are striking. The crew of another whaleship, sunk by a whale years later, sailed their little boats towards a heavy shipping route and were saved in two days. At another time a ship's crew, adrift in lifeboats, lost a member to starvation and decided not to eat him, but to cut up the body as bait. This way they caught enough sharks to feed the other survivors.If the survival story is supremely harrowing, the working routine on a whaler was grueling enough, as the book deftly relates. Aside from the bad pay and the back-breaking labor, the sheer youth of the crew is shocking. The captain was 28, the first mate 23, most of the crew were teenagers, and one was only 14. The camaraderie of coming from the same hometown of Nantucket must have eased the harsh conditions for many of the crew. But here the survival story acquires a sinister ethnic overtone. All the ship's officers and about half of the men were Nantucketers. Of the ones who survived, almost all were Nantucketers. None of the African-American sailors survived. While the author discounts any deliberate factional killing, it is clear that group mentality and perhaps even racism influenced who survived and who didn't.This book is a tale well-told, rich with many compelling insights on history, character and society. Well-deserving of its National Book Award.
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Wow! Nice review, I think I might have to check this one out. I think I saw they are making this into a movie also. I'm going to have to check this book out soon!
—MaryannC.Book Fiend
Everyone knows the story of Moby Dick, the great white whale chased by Captain Ahab, that succeeds in sinking Ahab’s ship. Apparently, Herman Melville based the story on a real event, although the sperm whale was not white, merely an enraged, but also seemingly cunning, bull sperm whale. It’s this story of the whale ship Essex, and of the grim events that faced the sailors who left Nantucket in 1820, that Philbrick tells of in rather horrifying detail . The Essex’s Captain Pollard was on his first command and was only recently married when they sailed for the Pacific whaling grounds. The voyage did not get off to a good start when only a short while after their departure, he insisted on maintaining studding sails during a regular blow that resulted in a knockdown, the ship being blown over on its side by a strong gust of wind. That it ever righted itself was extraordinary and a testament to the seaworthiness of these vessels that were crewed usually by some twenty to thirty men. His crew was still quite green and the experience must have been unnerving, to say the least. Nantucket was populated by Quakers who never quite adjusted to the presence of offislanders, i.e., anyone not born on the island. They were also, despite their professed pacifistic nature, a rather savage lot. There was a “blood lust and pride that bound every mother, father and child in a clannish commitment to the hunt. . . . There was rumored to be a secret society of young women on the island whose members pledged to marry only men who had already killed a whale.” Be that as it may, they were not having much luck initially, but after a difficult passage around the Horn, they managed to find a pod of whales and begin filling the hold. Philbrick provides rich detail of the whaling industry and the lives of the men who crewed the ships. The book is worth reading for just that minutiae alone. In any case, two of the eventual survivors recorded the events in detail, so Philbrick has some evidence to help ground his narrative. It appears this bull sperm whale, estimated to be 85 feet long, quite large, only two feet shorter than the ship itself, drove head-on into the ship. Initially the crew suspected it must have been an accident, but this guy lined himself up and headed back in for a second shot, this time staving in the planks by the forecastle, causing water to rush in below the waterline and the ship to begin sinking. They managed to save three whaleboats and a substantial amount of provisions and water. Regretfully, the captain was not a forceful man, for his plan to sail westward to the Marquesas Islands probably would have saved many lives. That coupled with his inadequate navigational skills, particularly as they related to finding one’s longitude, and the crew’s fear of suspected cannibalism on those islands – an ironic fear, given what was to follow – forced his decision to follow the first mate Chase’s advice to sail for the west coast of South America, several thousand miles farther than the Marquesas. Cannibalism was an accepted reality among shipwrecked sailors, and, in fact, most of those who survived long voyages at sea following a shipwreck often had a time convincing their rescuers that they had not indulged in the practice. Philbrick’s description of the eventual eating of one’s fellow crewmen – they even cast lots to see who would die and be eaten – would make Stephen King proud and bring new meaning to the word “gross.” Had the crew adopted the practice of another shipwrecked crew, they might have survived without having had to indulge in the practice. This other crew cut up a sailor who died from hunger and used his parts for bait, catching many sharks that provided enough sustenance to get them through the ordeal. The Essex survivors never caught any fish. The story of what happened to the survivors after their rescue is as interesting as the rest of the book.
—Eric_W
First an acknowledgement: I wouldn't have read this book without the review written by my Goodreads friend Florence (Lefty). I have no natural inclination to read seafaring true stories. So, thank you Florence, this one had me gripped from beginning to end.Not having thought much about 19th century sailing most of my impressions were formerly supplied by 'Treasure Island', which of course has its value (I love it) but is hardly a factual account. I have started 'Moby Dick' a couple of times but given up in frustration. I'm not familiar with 'Mutiny on the Bounty'. 'In the Heart of the Sea' was like a lightning flash illuminating the grim realities of whaling in the early 19th century - whaling as an industry, ships as factories, and sailors as factory workers working in an industry with a dire record for health and safety and workers' rights. Of course, if you think about it, it has to be so. The sea was a dangerous environment in which to work, profits was the name of the game, and the industry included hunting giant beasts in their own element, cutting them up and extracting the oil on board ship and being away from home for over two years. In these conditions total novices to sailing had a crash course in trimming the sails and climbing the rigging while suffering from sea-sickness, supervised by a pretty brutal first mate and a distant captain.The smells, sounds and horror of the industry are one thing, but this is the story of when it all goes badly wrong, when the crew find themselves abandoning ship and struggling to reach land 2,000 miles away, against all the odds. We learn of what happens in the extremes of human hardship, and it is not pretty. It is hard to read about, and even in our well-cushioned times it is frighteningly real and imaginable. The mixture of factual description and vivid storytelling brings the situation shockingly alive, you might say shudderingly alive, and it is riveting. Can anybody say that the exploration of how far a human will go for survival is not a gripping and uncomfortable subject? Read this book to find out just how far these sailors could go, even while retaining their humanity and their morality.
—Ruth
