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

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  What is known about Owen Chase's life after the Essex disaster is recounted by Heffernan in Stove by a Whale (pp. 119-45). Emerson recorded his conversation with the sailor about the white whale and the Winslow/Essexon February 19,1834 (Journals, vol. 4, p. 265). Melville's memories of meeting Chase's son and seeing Chase himself are in the back pages of his copy of the Essex narrative (Northwestern-Newberry Moby-Dick, pp. 981-83). Although Melville did apparently meet Owen Chase's son, he went to sea after Owen had retired as a whaling captain and mistook someone else for the former first mate of the Essex. Even if Melville didn't actually see Chase, he thought he did, and it would be Melville's sensibility that would largely determine how future generations viewed the Essex disaster: through the lens of Moby-Dick. Melville's remarks concerning Chase's learning of his wife's infidelity are also recorded in his copy of the narrative (Northwestern-Newberry Moby-Dick, p. 995).

  In “Loss of the Ship Two Brothers of Nantucket,” Nickerson tells of what happened after the crew was taken to Oahu on the Martha: “all of the crew of the Two Brothers were safely landed and as the whaling fleet were at the time in that port, each took their own course and joined separate ships- as chances offered.” Heffernan speaks of Ramsdell's being captain of the General Jackson in Stove by a Whale (p. 152); the computerized genealogical records at the NHA show that Ramsdell's first wife, Mercy Fisher, bore four children and died in 1846, and that his second wife, Elisa Lamb, had two children. The Brooklyn City Directory lists a Thomas G. Nickerson, shipmaster, living on 293 Hewes as late as 1872. Benjamin Lawrence's obituary appeared in the Nantucket In-

  quirer and Mirror (April 5, 1879). Nickerson writes in his narrative about the fates of William Wright and Thomas Chappel. Seth Weeks's obituary appeared in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror (September 24, 1887); it concludes: “He became blind for some years past, and ended his life in sweet peace and quiet among his own people, always highly respected and honored.”

  Edouard Stackpole recounts the anecdote about Nantucketers' not talking about the Essex in “Aftermath” in the NHA edition of Nickerson's narrative (p. 78). For an account of the island's reputation as a Quaker abolitionist stronghold, see my “'Every Wave Is a Fortune': Nantucket Island and the Making of an American Icon”; Whittier writes about Nantucket in his ballad “The Exiles,” about Thomas Macy's voyage to the island in 1659. I discuss the success of the almost all-black crew of the Loper in Away Off Shore (pp. 162-63). Frederick Douglass ends the first edition of the narrative of his life with his speech at the Nantucket Atheneum.

  Thomas Heffernan traces the literary uses of the Essex story in his chapter “Telling the Story” (pp. 155-82). The author of an article in the Garrettsville (Ohio) Journal (September 3, 1896) about the return of the Essex trunk to Nantucket provides convincing evidence of the impact heEssex story had on America'syoungpeople: “InMcGuffey's old 'Eclectic Fourth Reader' we used to read that account. It told about whalers being in open whale-boats two thousand miles from land... Such accounts as that make impressions on the minds of children which last.” Testifying to how far the story of the Essex spread is a ballad titled “The Shipwreck of the Essex,” recorded in Cornwall, England. The ballad takes many liberties with the facts of the disaster, claiming, for example, that lots were cast no less than eight times while the men were still on Ducie Island (in Simpson's Cannibalism and the Common Lau. pp. 316-17). Emerson's letter to his daughter about the Essex is in his collected letters, edited by Ralph Rusk, vol. 3 (pp. 398-99). OnMelville's one and only visit to Nantucket, see Susan Beegel's “Herman Melville: Nantucket's First Tourist.” Melville recorded his impressions of George Pollard in the pages of Chase's Narrative (Northwestern-Newberry Moby-Dick, pp. 987-88).

  On Nantucket's decline as a whaling port and the Great Fire of 1846, see my Away Off Shore (pp. 195-98, 203-4, 209-10). Christopher Hussey, in Talks About Old Nantucket, writes about how the burning slick of oil surrounded the firefighters in the shallows of the harbor

  (p. 61); see also William C. Macy's excellent account of the fire in Part III of Obed Macy's History ofNantucket (pp. 287-89). Concerning the Oak, Nantucket's last whaling vessel, Alexander Starbuck writes: “Sold at Panama, 1872; sent home 60 bbls sperm, 450 bbls. [right] whale. Nantucket's last whaler” (p. 483).

  The statistics concerning the number of sperm whales killed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are from Dale Rice's “Sperm “Whale” (p. 191); see also Davis et al.'s In Pursuit of Leviathan (p. 135) and Hal Whitehead's “The Behavior of Mature Male Sperm Whales on the Galapagos Islands Breeding Grounds” (p. 696). Charles Wilkes (the same man who, as a midshipman, talked with George Pollard) recorded the observation that sperm whales had “become wilder” in vol. 5 of Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition (p. 493). Alexander Starbuck collected accounts of whale attacks on ships in History of the American Whale Fishery(pp. 114-25). Captain DeBlois's description of his encounter with the whale that sank the Ann Alexander is in Clement Sawtell's The Ship Ann Alexander of New Bedford, 1805-1851 (pp. 61-84). Melville speaks of the “Ann Alexander whale” in a letter dated November 7,1851, to Evert Duyckinck in his Correspondence^. 139-40).

  In a letter dated November 15, 1868, to Winnifred Battie, Phebe Chase tells of seeing Owen Chase: “[H]e called me cousin Susan (taking me for sister Worth) held my hand and sobbed like a child, saying O my head, my head[.] [I]t was pitiful to see the strong man bowed, then his personal appearance so changed, didn't allow himself decent clothing, fears he shall come to want” (NHA Collection 105, Folder 15). For information concerning Nickerson, see Edouard Stackpole's foreword to the NHA edition of Nickerson's narrative (pp. 8-11). My thanks to Aimee Newell, Curator of Collections at the NHA, for providing me with information about Benjamin Lawrence's circle of twine and the Essex chest. See “A Relic of the Whaleship Essex” in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror (August 22, 1986) and “A Valuable Relic Preserved” in the Garrettsville Journal (September 3,1896).

  epilogue: Bones

  Information on the sperm whale that washed up on Nantucket at the end of 1997 comes from the following sources: articles by Dionis Gauvin and Chris Warner in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror (January 8,1998); articles by J. C. Gamble in the Nantucket Beacon (January

  6, 1998); “The Story of Nantucket's Sperm Whale” hy Cecil Barron Jensen in Historic Nantucket (Summer 1998, pp. 5-8); and interviews conducted in May and June of 1999 with Edie Ray, Tracy Plaut, Tracy Sundell, Jeremy Slavitz, Rick Morcom, and Dr. Karlene Ketten. Dr. Wesley Tiffney, Director of the University of Massachusetts-Boston Field Station, spoke with me about erosion at Codfish Park (personal communication, June 1999).

  The whale necropsy was supervised by Connie Marigo and Howard Krum of the New England Aquarium. The cutting up of the whale was directed by Tom French of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. Working with French were David Taylor, a science teacher at Triton Regional High School in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and three of Taylor's students. It was fitting that Taylor and his students were from Newburyport, which was where many of Nantucket's first settlers had come from in the seventeenth century. The Nantucket Historical Association was officially granted the whale skeleton by the National Marine Fisheries Service in the winter of 1998.

  According to Clay Lancaster's Holiday Island, Thomas Nickerson operated a guest house on North Water Street in the mid-1870s (when he met the writer Leon Lewis), but had relocated to North Street (now Cliff Road) by 1882 (p. 55). An advertisement in the Inquirerand Mirror (June 26,1875) announces Nickerson's having opened “a family board-inghouse [with] several large airy and commodious rooms, with all the comforts of a home.” My thanks to Elizabeth Oldham for bringing this ad to my attention.

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