Whaleship Essex
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| Sketch of the Whaleship Essex being struck by a whale 20 November 1820. Sketched by Thomas Nickerson.
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Crew of the Essex |
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Cabin Boy Owen Dugas Second Mate Matthew Joy Boatsteerers Benjamin Lawrence • Obed Hendricks Steward William Bond Sailors Owen Coffin • Isaac Cole • Henry De Witt Cabin Boy |
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 sperm whales. She was 87 feet long, and measured 238 tons. She was captained by a 28 year old man named George Pollard Jr.
On November 20, 1820, the Essex was struck and pushed multiple times by a sperm whale. The ship sank 2,000 miles (3,700 km) off South America. The twenty sailors set out in three small whaleboats, with wholly inadequate supplies of food and water, and landed on uninhabited Henderson Island, within 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 Whaleship 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.
Cabin boy Owen Dugas, Benjamin Lawrence, and young Thomas Nickerson survived through similarly desperate measures, and were rescued by the British Merchantman Brig Indian 93 days after the Essex sank. Pollard, Chase, Ramsdell, Lawrence, and Nickerson were reunited in the port city of Valparaiso, where they informed officials there of their three shipmates stranded on Henderson Island. A ship destined on a trans - pacific passage was ordered to look for the men on Henderson. Those three men were eventually rescued, although they were nearly dead.
By the time the last of the eight survivors were rescued on 5 April 1821, seven sailors had been eaten.
First Mate Owen Chase wrote an account of the disaster, the Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex; this was used by Herman Melville as one of the inspirations for his novel Moby-Dick, which really only tells the first part of this tragic Whaleship Essex story.
Memories of the harrowing ordeal haunted Owen Chase. He suffered terrible headaches and nightmares. Later in his life, Chase began hiding food in the attic of his Nantucket house on Orange Street (Philbrick, p. 244).
The cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson, wrote another account titled The Loss of the Ship "Essex" Sunk by a Whale and the Ordeal of the Crew in Open Boats which was not published until 1984 by the Nantucket Historical Association. Nickerson wrote his account late in his life and it was lost until 1960. It was not until 1980 that it came into the hands of Nantucket whaling expert Edouard Stackpole that its importance was realized. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a National Book Award winning work of maritime history by Nathaniel Philbrick. It tells the story of the Essex including the point of view of Nickerson in addition to that of Chase.
Today, staff members of the Nantucket Historical Association retell the story of this ill-fated ship almost daily, in a presentation called "the Essex Gam."
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[edit] Trivia
The song "Set, Watch, Mr. Chase" by indie band Prima makes numerous references to the tragedy.
The title track from the 1971 album "Nantucket Sleighride" by American hard rock group Mountain is subtitled and dedicated `To Owen Coffin'.
[edit] See also
- Ann Alexander (ship) sunk by a whale August 20, 1851
- The Custom of the Sea
- The Raft of the Medusa
- Moby-Dick
[edit] References
- Philbrick, Nathaniel (2001). In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-100182-8. OCLC 46949818.
- Chase, Owen (1821). Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex. New York: W. B. Gilley. OCLC 12217894.
- Nickerson, Thomas [1876] (1984). The Loss of the Ship Essex Sunk by a Whale and the Ordeal of the Crew in Open Boats. Nantucket: Nantucket Historical Society. OCLC 11613950.
[edit] External links
- Summary of the Essex Tragedy
- Artifacts of the Essex
- In the Heart of the Sea:The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick (ISBN 0-670-89157-6)
- Article on the Essex published in H2G2
- Nantucket Historical Association
