In the Heart of the Sea: The Epic True Story That Inspired Moby-Dick

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  The human colonization of the Pacific Islands appears to have followed a pattern similar to the spread of plants and birds. Moving from one stepping-stone of an island to the next, people pushed out ever farther to the east and south. Archeological digs on Henderson have revealed that man first arrived on the island sometime between 800 and 1050 AD. These first inhabitants established a settlement on the same beach where the Essex crew hauled up their whaleboats. In the few places where the soil allowed for it, they grew sweet potatoes. They fished with hooks made out of imported pearl shells. They buried their dead in slab crypts. But by 1450, they were gone, no longer able to scratch out a living on what is considered today the “last pristine elevated limestone island in the world.”

  there was no Christmas feast for the Essex crew. That evening they “found that a fruitless search for nourishment had not repaid us the labors of a whole day.” Only grass remained, and that was “not much relished,” Chase wrote, “without some other food.” They began to “entertain serious apprehensions that we should not be able to live long here.”

  In less than a week, the Essex crew had accomplished what had taken their Polynesian predecessors at least four centuries. By December 26, their seventh day on Henderson and their thirty-fifth since leaving the wreck, they had resolved to abandon this used-up island. In Chase's words, their situation was “worse than it would have been in our boats on the ocean; because, in the latter case we should be still making some progress towards the land, while our provisions lasted.” In preparation for their departure, they had already begun working on the whaleboats. “We nailed our boats as well as it was possible to do,” Nickerson wrote, “with the small quantity of boat nails in our possession, in order to prepare them to stand against the boisterous elements which we were again... to encounter.”

  The coast of Chile was approximately three thousand miles away-about twice as far as they had already sailed. Upon studying their copies of Bowditch's Navigator, they realized that Easter Island, at latitude 27 °9' south, longitude 109 °35' west, was less than a third of that distance. Although they, once again, knew nothing about the island, they decided to sail for it, belatedly realizing that the potential terrors of an unknown island were nothing compared to the known terrors of an open boat in the open ocean.

  Early in the day, “all hands were called together,” Nickerson remembered, “for a last talk previous to taking a final departure.” Pollard explained that they would be leaving the next day and that the boat-crews would remain the same as they'd been prior to their arrival on Henderson. It was then that three men came forward-Joy's boat-steerer Thomas Chappel and two teenagers from Cape Cod, Seth Weeks and William Wright, from Pollard's and Chase's boats, respectively. Several times over the last few days these three white off-islanders had been observed “reasoning upon the probabilities of their deliverance.” And the more they talked about it, the more they dreaded the prospect of climbing back into the whaleboats.

  Chappel, the once spirited and mischievous Englishman who had set fire to Charles Island, could see that second mate Matthew Joy did not have long to live. As the rest of the crew gradually regained weight and strength during the week on Henderson, Joy, who had possessed a “weak and sickly constitution” even before the sinking, had remained shockingly thin. Chappel knew that if Joy should die, he would become, by default, his whaleboat's leader-a prospect no reasonable man could relish, given what might lie ahead.

  In preparing for a sea voyage that could result in the deaths of some, if not all, of the men assembled on the beach, the crew of the Essex were reenacting a scenario that had been played out countless times before on islands across the Pacific. The colonization of the Polynesian islands had depended on such scenarios. But instead of a last, desperate push to reach a known world, the early South Sea islanders had set out on voyages of discovery-sailing east and south into the giant blue void of the Pacific. During these long and uncertain passages, starvation inevitably took its toll. The biological anthropologist Stephen McGarvey has speculated that the people who survived these voyages tended to have a higher percentage of body fat before the voyage began and/or more efficient metabolisms, allowing them to live longer on less food than their thinner companions. (McGarvey theorizes that this is why modern-day Polynesians suffer from a high incidence of obesity.)

  The same factors that favored fat, metabolically efficient Polynesians were now at work among the crew of the Essex. Although they had all survived on the same rations during their month in the boats, this had not been the case prior to the sinking. As was customary aboard a whaleship, the food served in the forecastle (where the blacks lived) had been a grade below the miserable fare that had been served to the boatsteerers and young Nantucketers in steerage. The blacks were also, in all probability, in poorer health than the whites even before they sailed on the Essex. (The life expectancy of a black infant in 1900-the earliest date for which there are statistics-was only thirty-three years, more than fourteen years less than that of a white infant.)

  Now, thirty-eight days after the whale attack, it was plain to all that the African Americans, although not as weak as Joy, were faring more poorly than the rest of the crew.

  At the other extreme were the Nantucketers. Besides being better fed, they had an additional source of strength: they were all from the same close-knit community. The younger Nantucketers had been friends since childhood, while the officers, especially Captain Pollard, demonstrated a fatherly concern for the teenagers' welfare. Whether enduring the torments of thirst and hunger on the boats or foraging for food on Henderson, the Nantucketers provided one another with support and encouragement that they did not offer the others.

  They had all seen how the man-of-war hawks robbed the tropic birds of their food. As conditions deteriorated on the boats, one could only wonder who of these nine Nantucketers, six African Americans, and five white off-islanders would become the hawks and who would become the tropic birds. Chappel, Wright, and Weeks decided that they did not want to find out.

  “The rest of us could make no objection to their plan,” Chase wrote, “as itlessened the load of our boats, [and] allowed us their share of the provisions.” Even the first mate had to admit that “the probability of their being able to sustain themselves on the island was much stronger than that of our reaching the mainland.” Pollard assured the three men that if he did make it back to South America, he would do everything in his power to see that they were rescued.

  With downcast eyes and trembling rips, the three men drew away from the rest of the crew. They'd already picked a spot, well removed from the original encampment, on which to construct a crude shelter out of tree branches. It was time they started work. But their seventeen shipmates were reluctant to see them go, offering “every little article that could be spared from the boats.” After accepting the gifts, Chappel and his two companions turned and started down the beach.

  that evening Pollard wrote what he assumed would be his last letter home. It was addressed to his wife, Mary, the twenty-year-old rope-maker's daughter with whom he had spent the sum total of fifty-seven days of married life. He also wrote another, more public letter:

  Account of the loss of the Ship Essex of Nantucket in North America, Ducies Island, December 20, 1820, commanded by Capt. Pollard, jun. which shipwreck happened on the 20th day - of November, 1820 on the equator in long. 120 ° W done by a large whale striking her in the bow, which caused her to fill with water in about 10 minutes. We got what provisions and water the boats would carry, and left her on the 22nd of November, and arrived here this day with all hands, except one black man, who left the ship at Ticamus. We intend to leave tomorrow, which will be the 26th of December [actually December 27], 1820, for the continent. I shall leave with this a letter for my wife, and whoever finds, and will have the goodness to forward it will oblige an unfortunate man, and receive his sincere wishes.

  George Pollard, Jun.

  To the west of their encampment, they had found
a large tree with the name of a ship-the Elizabeth-carved into it. They transformed the tree into a Galapagos-like post office, placing the letters in a small wooden box they nailed to the trunk.

  On December 27 at ten o'clock in the morning, by which time the tide had risen far enough to allow the boats to float over the rocks that surrounded the island, they began to load up. In Pollard's boat were his boatsteerer, Obed Hendricks, along with their fellow Nantucketers Barzillai Ray, Owen Coffin, and Charles Ramsdell, and the African American Samuel Reed. Owen Chase's crew was down to five: the Nantucketers Benjamin Lawrence and Thomas Nickerson, along with Richard Peterson, the elderly black from New York, and Isaac Cole, a young white off-islander. Joy's crew contained the white off-islander Joseph West and four blacks-Lawson Thomas, Charles Shorter, Isaiah Sheppard, and the steward William Bond. Not only were these men under the command of a seriously ill second mate, but Chappel's decision to remain on the island had left them without a boatsteerer to assist Joy in the management of the crew. But neither Pollard nor Chase was willing to part with a Nantucket-born boatsteerer.

  Soon it was time for them to leave the island. But Chappel, Wright, and Weeks were nowhere to be found. “ [T]hey had not come down,” Chase wrote, “either to assist us to get off, nor to take any kind of leave of us.” The first mate walked down the beach to their dwelling and told them they were about to set sail. The men were, Chase observed, “very much affected,” and one of them began to cry. “They wished us to write to their relations, should Providence safely direct us again to our homes, and said but little else.” Seeing that they were “ill at heart about taking any leave of us,” Chase bid them a hasty good-bye and left for the boats. “They followed me with their eyes,” he wrote, “until I was out of sight, and I never saw more of them.”

  Before leaving the island, the men in the boats decided to backtrack a bit and sail to a beach they had seen during their original circuit of the island. It had looked like a spot that “might be productive of some unexpected good fortune,” possibly providing them with fresh provisions for the start of their journey. After dropping half a dozen men on shore to search for food, the rest of them spent the day fishing. They saw several sharks but were unable to catch anything save a few mackerel-sized fish. The shore party returned at about six o'clock that evening with some more birds, and they made final preparations to leave.

  It had been more of a tease than a salvation, but Henderson Island had at least given them a fighting chance. Back on December 20, Chase had seen “death itself staring us in the face.” Now, after more than a week of food and drink, their casks were full of fresh water. Their boats no longer leaked. In addition to hardtack, each crew had some fish and birds. There were also three fewer men to support. “We again set sail,” Nicker son wrote, “finally [leaving] this land which had been so providentially thrown in our way.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Whisper of Necessity

  BEFORE THEY LEFT Henderson Island, Chase loaded a flat stone and an armful of firewood into each boat. That first evening back on the water, as both the island and the sun slipped below the western horizon behind them, they put the stones to use as platforms for cooking fires. “[W]e kept our fires going,” Chase wrote, “and cooked our fish and birds, and felt our situation as comfortable as could be expected.”

  For a month they had been driven south and even west; now they hoped to sail almost directly east to Easter Island. For this to happen they needed two weeks of westerly breezes. However, at latitude 24° south, they were still in the trades, where for more than 70 percent of the year the wind blows out of the southeast. But that night, as if in answer to their prayers, a strong breeze sprang up out of the northwest, and they steered straight for Easter.

  If they were to keep track of their progress east, they needed to find a way to estimate their longitude-something they had not done during the first leg of the voyage. A month of sailing without knowing their east-to-west position had proved to them the necessity of at least attempting to determine it. Before leaving Henderson, they decided to maintain what Chase called “a regular reckoning.” Their noon observation told them their latitude, and by doing as Captain Bligh had done before them-using an improvised log line to gauge their speed and their compass to determine their direction-they could calculate their longitude. The Essex boats were no longer sailing blind.

  For three days the northwesterly breeze held. Then, on December 30, the wind shifted into the east-southeast, and for two days they were forced to steer a course well to the south of Easter Island. But by the first day of the new year, 1821, the wind had shifted to the north, and they were once again back on track.

  On January 3 they sailed into what Nickerson called “hard weather.” Squalls blasted them from the southwest. “The seas had become so rough,” Nickerson remembered, “that we were fearful that each successive gust would swamp our boats... Every squall was attended with the most vivid flashes of lightning and awful thunder claps, which seemed to cause the very bosom of the deep to tremble and threw a cheerless aspect upon the face of the ocean.”

  The next day, the capricious wind shifted to the east-northeast. With their sails trimmed in tight on the port tack, they steered as close to the wind as possible but were still unable to fetch Easter Island. Pollard and Chase came to the same distressing conclusion: they were now too far to the south to have any hope of reaching the island. They searched their Navigator copies for the next closest island “where the wind would allow of our going.” About eight hundred miles off the Chilean coast are the islands of Juan Fernandez and Masafuera. Unfortunately there were more than 2,500 miles between them and these islands-farther than they had sailed since leaving the Essex forty-four days before.

  On the same day that they abandoned all hope of reaching Easter Island, they ate the last of their fish and birds. It was back to their daily ration of a cup of water and three ounces of hardtack per man.

  For the next two days, the wind deserted them. The sun beat down with the same withering force that had so oppressed them prior to their arrival at Henderson. The conditions were the hardest on Matthew Joy, whose bowels had ceased to function. Ever since leaving the island he had continued to deteriorate, and his glassy, distracted eyes had taken on the unmistakable look of death.

  On January 7, a breeze rose up out of the north. Their noon observation revealed that they had slipped almost six degrees of latitude, or 360 nautical miles, to the south. But it was their progress to the east that most concerned them. They estimated that they were now only six hundred miles closer to the mainland than when they had left Henderson eleven days before.

  The next day Matthew Joy made a request. The twenty-seven-year-old second mate asked if he might be moved to the captain's boat. The transfer was effected, Chase wrote, “under the impression that he would be more comfortable there, and more attention and pains be bestowed in nursing and endeavoring to comfort him.” But all knew the real reason for the second mate's removal. Now that he was reaching the end, Joy, who had been on a boat with five coofs, wanted to die among his own people.

  Joy came from an old Quaker family. Near the town hall on Nantucket his grandfather had owned a large house that was still referred to as the Reuben Joy homestead. In 1800, when Matthew was only seven years old, his parents moved the family to Hudson, New York, where Nantucketers had established a whaling port soon after the Revolution. Matthew remained a Friend until 1817, when he returned to his native island to wed nineteen-year-old Nancy Slade, a Congregationalist. As was customary in such cases, he was disowned that year by the Nantucket Monthly Meeting for “marrying out.”

  Joy was no longer a Quaker, but on January 10, a hot, windless day in the Pacific, he demonstrated a Friend's sense of duty and devotion. For the last two days his boat-crew had been left leaderless; he now asked to be returned to them. His loyalty to his crew was in the end greater than his need for comfort from his fellow Nantucketers. The transfer was made, and by four o'cloc
k that afternoon Matthew Joy was dead.

  Nantucket's Quaker Graveyard was without worldly monuments of any kind, and many had compared its smooth, unmarred sweep to the anonymous surface of the sea. Like that graveyard thousands of miles away, the sea that morning was calm and smooth-not a breath of air ruffled the Pacific's slow, rhythmic swell. The three boats were brought together, and after sewing Joy up in his clothes, they tied a stone to his feet and “consigned him in a solemn manner to the ocean.”

  Even though they knew Joy had been ill for quite some time, his loss hit them hard. “It was an incident,” Chase wrote, “which threw a gloom over our feelings for many days.” The last two weeks had been particularly difficult for the men on the second mate's boat. Instead of drawing strength and inspiration from their leader, they had been required to expend valuable energy nursing him. Making it even harder was the absence of Joy's boatsteerer, Thomas Chappel. To fill the void, Pollard ordered his own boatsteerer, the twenty-one-year-old Obed Hendricks, to take command of the second mate's shaken and dispirited crew.

  Soon after taking over the steering oar, Hendricks made a disturbing discovery. Joy's illness had apparently prevented him from closely monitoring the distribution of his boat's provisions. As best as Hendricks could determine, there was only enough hardtack in his boat's cuddy to last two, maybe three more days.

  Throughout the morning and afternoon of the following day-the fifty-second since the men had left the Essex-the wind built out of the northwest until by nightfall it was blowing a full gale. The men took in all sail and steered their boats before the wind. Even without a stitch of canvas set, the boats surfed wildly down the crests of the waves. “Flashes of lightning were quick and vivid,” Chase wrote, “and the rain came down in cataracts.” Instead of being terrified, the men were exhilarated to know that each fifty-knot gust was blowing them toward their destination. “Although the danger was very great,” Nickerson remembered, “yet none seemed to dread this so much as death by starvation, and I believe none would have exchanged this terrific gale for a more moderate head wind or a calm.”