Narratives of the Wreck of the Whale-Ship Essex

By Owen Chase

In 1819, the American whaler Essex was sailing deep into the great equatorial hunting grounds of the Pacific when it was destroyed by a maddened sperm whale. By all reports, the 85-foot whale deliberately rammed the ship twice and sank it. The incident, which occurred in the same year that Herman Melville was born, became a primary source of inspiration for Moby-Dick. Indeed, much of the detail and color in the final chapter of Melville's work is drawn directly from these three eyewitness accounts. The book also served as the basis for the 2015 movie In the Heart of the Sea, directed by Ron Howard and starring Chris Hemsworth.
The harrowing events are described in detail by the first mate, Owen Chase, and corroborated in all essentials by both the captain, George Pollard, and the second mate, Thomas Chappel. Although the ship sank quickly after the attack, the horror lingered for months, and ended in cannibalism as the survivors drifted helplessly in small boats across thousands of miles of open sea.
These three narratives are reprinted from a rare limited edition. An introduction traces the incorporation of the real-life incident into Melville's fictional re-creation, and twelve beautiful wood engravings add a further note of drama.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Oct 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9780486808796

Owen Chase

OWEN CHASE was the first mate of the Essex. He came from a family of Nantucket mariners.

Book preview

NARRATIVES

OF THE

WRECK

OF THE

WHALE–SHIP

ESSEX

Owen Chase

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

Mineola, New York

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 1989 and reissued in 2015, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in 1935 by The Golden Cockerel Press, London, in an edition limited to 275 copies. The Table of Contents was prepared specially for the Dover edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chase, Owen

[Narratives of the wreck of the whale-ship Essex of Nantucket which was destroyed by a whale in the Pacific Ocean in the year 1819]

Narratives of the wreck of the whale-ship Essex / Owen Chase, et al.

p. cm.

Reprint. Originally published: Narratives of the wreck of the whale-ship Essex of Nantucket which was destroyed by a whale in the Pacific Ocean in the year 1819. London: Golden Cockerel Press, 1935.

eISBN-13: 978-0-486-80879-6

1. Essex (Whale-ship) I. Title

G530.E72 1989

CIP

Manufactured in the United States by RR Donnelley

261212052015

www.doverpublications.com

For my friend

A. CROOKS RIPLEY

NARRATIVES

OF THE WRECK OF THE

WHALE-SHIP ESSEX

OF NANTUCKET WHICH WAS DESTROYED BY A WHALE IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN IN THE YEAR 1819 TOLD BY OWEN CHASE FIRST MATE THOMAS CHAPPEL SECOND MATE AND GEORGE POLLARD CAPTAIN OF THE SAID VESSEL TOGETHER WITH AN INTRODUCTION & TWELVE ENGRAVINGS ON

WOOD BY ROBERT GIBBINGS

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE GOLDEN COCKEREL PRESS LONDON 1935

Title page of the original edition.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Owen Chase’s Narrative

Thomas Chappel’s Account

George Pollard’s Narrative

A: Where Owen Chase’s boat separated from the other two. B: Where the third boat was lost. C: Where Owen Chase’s boat was picked up. D: Where the Captain’s boat was picked up.

INTRODUCTION

HERMAN MELVILLE WAS BORN IN NEW YORK City on August 1st, 1819, and on August 12th of the same year the whale-ship Essex sailed from Nantucket on her last ill-fated voyage. As a result of these two happenings there was published in 1851 a book, by name Moby Dick or the Whale.

In the following narratives we have an account of the loss of the Essex described in detail by the first mate and corroborated in all essentials by the Captain and the second mate. There can be no doubt that their tragic story supplied not only the original idea for Melville’s masterpiece, but in addition was drawn upon, in places almost word for word, for much of the local colour in that tremendous final chapter of his classic.

On this both Raymond Weaver in Herman Melville, Mariner & Mystic, 1921, and Meade Minnigerode in Some Personal Letters of Herman Melville, 1922, are agreed, although they do not give reasons for their statements.

But a comparison of Melville’s romance with the grim facts here printed can leave no doubt in the reader’s mind.

Not alone is the intelligent malignity of the White Leviathan similiar to the malevolent premeditation of the particular whale described by Chase but the details of the attack are also alike. In each story the ship is struck on the starboard bow and the whale passes under the ship, grazing the length of the keel as he goes along. In each case he attacks twice, in each case the orders Up helm to the steersman are identical. After the attack Chase describes the crew as being like sick women, while Melville writes Let not Starbuck die in a woman’s fainting fit. The location of the tragedy is the same in both books. The Essex was sunk just south of the Equator in longitude 119° W.; Melville writes that all other whaling waters swept, they were sailing south eastward for the equatorial fishing ground. This lies between longitude 90° and 120° W.

If further proof of indebtedness were needed we know that in Melville’s own copy of The Loss of the Essex there are eighteen pages of notes in his writing, and in Moby Dick, Chapter xlv, he writes:

"The Sperm Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, & judiciously malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in, utterly destroy, & sink a large ship; & what is more, the Sperm Whale has done it.

"First: In the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, of Nantucket, was cruising in the Pacific Ocean. One day she saw spouts, lowered her boats, and gave chase to a shoal of Sperm Whales. Ere long, several of the whales were wounded; when, suddenly, a very large whale escaping from the boats, issued from the shoal, and bore directly down upon the ship. Dashing his forehead against her hull, he so stove her in, that in less than ‘ten minutes’ she settled down and fell over. Not a surviving plank of her has been seen since. . . .

"At this day Captain Pollard is a resident of Nantucket. I have seen Owen Chace, who was chief mate of the Essex at the time of the tragedy; I have read his plain and faithful narrative; I have conversed with his son; and all this within a few miles of the scene of the catastrophe."

Apart from literary associations, however, this book has many other interests. It is not only the first authentic account of a ship being rammed and sunk by a whale; it is also an account of truly unparalleled sufferings in an open boat, for though only a few years previously Captain Bligh had made his famous voyage from near Tofua to Timor, a distance of nearly four thousand miles in forty-eight days, the crew of the Essex were at sea for nearly double that time, and however desperate the circumstances in which the survivors of the Bounty found themselves, they were never reduced to the extremity of eating each other, the only means by which any of the Essex survived.

On this point it is interesting to note that in his manuscript journal Bligh says:

This perhaps, does not permit me to be a proper judge on a story of miserable people like us being at last driven to the necessity of destroying one another for food—but if I may be allowed, I deny the fact in its greatest extent. I say, I do not believe that, among us, such a thing could happen, but death through famine would be received in the same way as any mortal disease.

But though this is the view of a man who had been unpleasantly close to the practical consideration of such a subject, there have been many precedents to the contrary. In the seventeenth century there were seven English sailors blown out to sea from St. Kitts. After seventeen days of starvation they cast lots and killed and ate one of their number. In 1765, the crew of the American sloop Peggy were driven to a like necessity, and in 1816 there was the case of the French frigate Medusa wrecked off the coast of Africa. There are people alive to-day who remember the survivors of The Mignonette being brought ashore at Falmouth. They can show you photographs of the blood-stained boat in which the unfortunate cabin-boy met his death, and they will tell you of the universal sympathy for the sufferers and of the speedy pardon granted to them after their trial.

There are of course various discrepancies in the three narratives here printed, particularly between the facts related by the Captain and the accounts given by the first & second mates, but anyone reading the Captain’s account will realize that by the time he had reached Raiatea he was already a man broken in fortune and in spirit. Several years had elapsed since the wreck of the Essex and in the meantime he had lost a second ship, so that the earlier events were likely to have become clouded. Furthermore, this version is dependent on the memory of the missionaries, whereas we have it from Chase that among the items he had saved from the wreck were some eight or ten sheets of writing-paper and a lead pencil with which he commenced to keep a sort of journal. We may, therefore, assume that the variations in the Captain’s story were due to years of brooding on what Sir John Barrow, speaking of open boat voyages, calls the most painfully interesting and the most calamitous perhaps ever recorded. It is easy to imagine that events had so seared themselves into his brain as to make him believe that he was actually on his ship at the time of the attack, whereas we have it from both the first and second mate that he was in one of the boats at the time. His reference to the whale as she may only be an extension of the traditional "There she blows" which was applied to all whales of either sex, but it is more likely to be an indication of the confusion in the unfortunate man’s mind. Bull Sperm Whales, being three or four times the size of the female and the largest known having scarcely exceeded ninety feet, it is safe

Reviews for Narratives of the Wreck of the Whale-Ship Essex

[alcracka · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Essex is one of the stories that inspired Moby-Dick, the other being the legend of Mocha Dick, an albino sperm whale who was a dick. This edition collects every first- or firstish-hand account of the Essex, which is almost certainly more than you need.

The main narrative, and the one Melville got his hands on, is that of first mate Owen Chase. As a true adventure story, it's pretty great. Gripping stuff. Surprisingly well [almost certainly ghost-]written.

As a companion read to Moby-Dick, though, it's not terribly helpful. The description of the actual fight with the whale has clear connections to Moby-Dick, particularly in a short passage describing the strength of a sperm whale's head; it's the inspiration for chapter 76, which is an entire chapter about sperm whale heads because that's how Melville rolls.

The other major narrative here is by a cabin boy named Nickerson, and it's even less useful. He goes into much greater length about the pre-ramming part of the trip, which is a little fun - he's a kid, so he's mostly interested in relating awesome stories about pirates that he heard from other people - but once the ramming happens, he basically plagiarizes Chase the rest of the way.

There are also some notes by Melville that are nowhere near as interesting as you'd like them to be - mostly concerned with starfuckerish descriptions of his own encounter with Chase - and some random other letters and bits, dimly interesting due to the lack of agreement about who exactly shot Owen Coffin.

Four stars for being a great survival story; two stars for we didn't really need all that other stuff.

[kropotkin_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Read it for the thrilling account of the sole recorded instance of a whale fighting back and winning. Compulsive.

[bcquinnsmom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Including a glossary of terms, this book is only 106 pages long, but packs a wallop! Gary Kinder, himself an author, wrote the introduction to this small narrative, and his ending words were "As you sit in your chair, the subliminal thought recurs: My god, this really happened." I knew then I was in for a good read. synopsis:The first mate of the whaleship Essex, Owen Chase, set down a chronological narrative of events that happened to himself and the crew of the Essex, after the fact. In November of 1820, the whaleboats of the ship were out trying to make progress on capturing & killing sperm whales when the Essex was rammed by another whale. This attack left a hole in the ship, and although the crew were able to board the ship & take out provisions, they were all forced to take to the whaleboats out in open sea. Twenty men started on the journey; only five survived. This book narrates what happened between the shipwreck & rescue. When you read this, you must consider that this book was a product of the times, so the reader gains the vantage point of one of the survivors, making the book all the more intriguing. I liked this book very much; I will probably wish to reread it at some point. Highly recommended.