Attack on the Essex

     

      A Sperm whale (shown above) 

       

We have all probably read of heard about the mighty whale, Moby Dick, as portrayed by Herman Melville in his novel (first published in England in October of 1851) relating the fictions attack or “stove” (meaning to ram into, in this instance) of the likewise fictional whaling ship “Pequod”.

Whales are known to ‘stove’ boats more often than you might think; modern day reports have surfaced describing such attacks occurring with sleek ocean going cruisers, but ships, well that’s another matter.  There is the story of the whale ship ‘Union’ that has been floating around since her sinking back in 1807, wherein it went down after some sort of contact with a sperm whale, but the details of the event are so vague that there is reason to suspect that the Union ran into the whale, as opposed to the whale running into the ship.

As you would expect, any other story regarding the sinking of a Nantucket whale ship such as the Essex would probably have had some enduring press coverage even if Herman Melville had not taken it as the model for the turbulent concluding chapters of his Moby-Dick novel. As things turned out, Melville's use of the Essex story has practically turned Melville into a Nantucket resident in the imagination of the public. Even though this popular misconception exists, as for Melville, at least as far as anyone knows, he had not even been to Nantucket when he wrote the book.

The demise of the Essex began fifteen months out of its home port. The ship, is documented as departing Nantucket Island Massachusetts on August 12, 1819, and enjoyed a rather early success in its hunt for whales, before November 20, 1820; on that date she arrived at a point just a short distance south of the equator. At eight AM that fateful morning, someone amongst the crew of 20, spotted whales and in turn small boats were ordered lowered for the happy pursuit. The first mate’s (Owen Chase) boat had been splintered by a whale in a previous hunt, so he was forced to return to the ship for repairs.

While on deck, awaiting repairs, Chase noticed that a large sperm whale with huge scars upon its head, was speeding directly for the ship, so he immediately ordered the helmsman to come about so as to avoid it.  “The words were scarcely out of my mouth,” Chase later wrote, “before he came down upon us with full speed, and struck the ship with his head just forward of the fore-chains; he gave us such an appalling and tremendous jar, as it nearly threw us all on our faces.”

While the few men who remained on board struggled to establish the necessary repairs, which they likely knew was a wasted effort; the whale struck again and within ten minutes the ship was awash and capsized. “My God, Mr. Chase, what is the matter?”Captain George Pollard, Jr., shouted when his small boat, maneuvered up to the wreck of the ship. His reply, “We have been stove by a whale.”

A full month later, on December 20, 1820 while they were sitting inside the remaining small boats, dispirited, silent, and dejected,  one the companions was said to have suddenly and loudly called out, ‘there is land!’ It turned out to be tiny Henderson Island. On this island the survivors found fresh water, which was the good news. They also found that the island had a very limited supply of food, which was the bad news, so on December 27^th, except for three men who chose to stay, the survivors set out in 3 small boats (each, about 25 feet in length) hoping to make land on Easter Island or in the worse case scenario, the coast of South America.

This latest adventure began the most severe part of the return trip. On January 10, Second Mate Matthew Joy departed the living and was in turn given a sea burial. Within a few days, the seemingly hopeless survivors would look upon the dead in a different light by making them a necessary part of the food supply.

Perhaps more than any other incident regarding the Essex’s few survivors, was not cannibalism per say, but the action which occurred when four of the men in Captain Pollard's boat decided by a majority vote, not to wait for the next death but to draw straws or as they called it ‘lots’, to see who should be shot so as to provide food for those remaining few. The food source lot fell on the captain’s young cousin, Owen Coffin, who was quickly shot dead by Charles Ramsdell, who had the bad luck of drawing the executioner’s lot.

The misfortunes of the men in the boats there after continued to multiply. They missed Easter Island completely, passing to the south of it. Then the three boats somehow separated, first Owen Chase’s from the other two and then Captain Pollard’s from the third, which was lost without a trace.

A total of 92 days after the loss of the Essex on February 18, 1821 Owen Chase, Benjamin Lawrence, and Thomas Nickerson were rescued off the coast of Valparaiso, Chile in South America. On February 23 Captain Pollard and Charles Ramsdell were rescued. The three men that had been left on the island were thereafter rescued despite the rescuer having initially been directed to the wrong island. Only eight (8) of the twenty (20) men on the Essex were left to tell the tale.

For nearly 200 years now there has been a good bit of debate as to why the whale attacked the Essex in the first place. Some say it mistakenly thought the ship was another whale intruding upon its territory, thus just looking for a fight you might say. Others theorize the whale was angered by the attacks being placed upon the other whales in the vicinity, by the whaling crew so it attacked the “mother ship”.

Finally, there’s my own more complex revenge theory: You may recall that the attacking whale was described as having a scarred head, now further consider the incident of the whaling ship Union a mere 13 years prior in 1807, wherein she allegedly ‘accidently’ struck a sperm whale before she sank into the depths of the sea.  The scarred head was no doubt the result of the altercation with the good ship Union a few years prior, and the attack on the Essex was simply the sweet taste of revenge or what the whale may have considered a simple grudge match.

Think a whale who was around in 1807 would not be a ‘player’ in 1820 or later? My theory is further supported by the fact that these guys live to see 70 years of age or more. So if he was 30 in 1807, he could have been a mean SOB at 43.

Sources ...

http://www.nha.org/history/hn/HN-fall1991-heffernan.html http://hitchhikinganimals.blogspot.com/2011/03/whale-attacks-on-sailing-ships.html  http://www.seasky.org/deep-sea/sperm-whale.html    www.afsc.noaa.gov/nmml/education/cetaceans/sperm.php

Post Script:                    For those of you, who take a part of their valuable time to review or read the critiques or posts that I have provided for the past several months, hopefully for a bit of additional information on the subjects and a small bit of entertainment as well, please be aware that I appreciate your patronage. However, I have not had the necessary stamina of recent date to continue with this activity.  In fact, the last 4 or 5 posts; I completed some time ago, which I had hoped would prevent an interruption in the daily posting sequence. Perhaps, if my page count continues to grow, I will be able to resume this process at a later date.

I believe this evenings critique totals around 190, most of which cover various topics of interest which you may have some desire to review ... they are all listed by month on the left side of this page.  Additionally, at the very bottom of this page I have made the necessary adjustment so as to list the top 10 posts for your added convenience, there you can simply click on the topic of choice.

Happy Holidays ... 12-25-11