Wreck of the Whaleship That Spawned Moby-Dick

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 20, 1999 | by Duncan Spencer

The true story that inspired Herman Melville is back in print: The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex by Owen Chase recounts a harrowing experience that ended with cannibalism at sea.

The word "horrifying" has received so many blows that its sharp edges have been dulled. We have become accustomed to slapping the "H" word on everything from a hot day to a freeway accident. But the word was fresh in 1821 when Owen Chase, a whaler out of Nantucket, published his recollections -- recently reissued as The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex: A Narrative (Harcourt Brace, $12 paper, 128 pp), edited by Iola Haverstick and Betty Shepard and introduced by Gary Kinder. (The Lyons Press, which recently reissued Richard Ellis' 1991 Men and Whales, also has published Chase's narrative with a foreword by Tim Cahill and introduction by Paul Lyons.)

Chase was part of the crew of the ship Essex, which was lost at sea between Ecuador and Hawaii, stove in by the attack of a large whale. The crew of 20, uninjured, went adrift in three whaleboats with two casks of bread, 195 gallons of water, a musket and powder, some tools and "a few turtle." The whalers were a tough lot, inured to a life of hardship and voyages lasting as long as three years. They also were men of hope, setting to sea with the idea of returning rich with their ship's hold bulging with casks of whale oil -- a farm boy's dream.

But nothing had prepared the Essex crew for this freakish occurrence, one of the few authenticated whale attacks, unique in that the whale repeatedly rammed the ship. Worse for the survivors, the Essex's end was sudden. With a hole in her bottom the size of a bunk, the ship disappeared almost as quickly as the Titanic.

The other difficulty, ironically, was the number of survivors. Normal shipwrecks wreaked a toll on crews. At sea in great storms, men were lost overboard or injured. In the case of a fatal meeting with the shore, many are tossed to their deaths by waves on treacherous rocks. The Essex, however, was well-equipped with lifeboats -- that is, their justly famed, swift-rowing whaleboats always at the ready, in good repair and equipped with oars, rope, hatchets, masts, sails and steering gear.

Adrift or moving slowly under sail toward a destination thousands of miles away, the mariners nevertheless faced death from starvation. All but seven of the men would die as the tiny flotilla of open whaleboats struggled eastward toward the coast of Peru. Several would be eaten by their shipmates after all other food, including shoes, had been devoured. One deliberately would be shot for food after drawing lots.

This ultimate horror was not forced on the castaways until after they happened, by chance, on the tiny arid Dulcie Island (near Pitcairn Island of Mutiny on the Bounty fame). From there, finding little but precious water and unsuspecting birds, they decided to press on, leaving three shipmates behind. Eventually, the tiny flotilla of whaleboats became separated. The captain of the Essex, George Pollard Jr., lost control of the expedition. Command of his own little vessel devolved on Chase.

The weather was relentless; food ran out; men began to die. The first were buried at sea, slipped over the side with some ballast and a few words. Then, with supplies exhausted and their bodies near collapse, the sailors "set to work" on the deceased, preparing the body to prevent spoiling. "We separated the limbs from the body and cut all the flesh from the bones, after which we opened the body, took out the heart, closed it again -- sewing it up as decently as we could -- and then committed it to the sea." The flesh kept them going another week. Then a sail was sighted, and after just short of three months in an open boat, they were rescued.

Even worse was the fate of Pollard's whaleboat flotilla, which kept close company with the third whaleboat. When three men died and were devoured, the survivors resorted to casting lots. "It fell upon Owen Coffin to die. With great fortitude and resignation, he submitted to his fate" writes Chase, though he did not witness the death. By dreadful chance, another man died naturally but, before these two bodies could be consumed by the remaining two survivors, they too saw a sail and were rescued.

It only remains to say that the human spirit is terrifyingly strong -- it can withstand almost anything. The Essex story, besides being an almost unbelievable tale of hardship, reveals why Sophocles wrote of Homo sapiens in Antigone: "Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man;... yea, he hath resource for all; without resource he meets nothing that must come; only against death shall he call for aid in vain; but from baffling maladies, he hath devised escapes."

Chase's tale, horrifying as it was, fell into obscurity in part because Herman Melville appropriated part of the story for his great novel Moby-Dick. (Melville, the editors tell us, actually met and interviewed Chase's son, gathering details for his own story of an attacking whale.) By contrast, Chase's narrative is too real, too desperate, too horrible in the true sense of the word -- "a painful feeling of loathing and fear" -- to remain part of popular culture. The voyage of the Essex lifeboats was indeed a descent into hell.