…and a tale of a whale.  I just finished “In the Heart of the Sea” by Nathaniel Philbrick, an exhaustively researched account of the sinking of the Nantucket-based whaling ship Essex in 1820, the real-life inspiration for Herman Melville’s classic “Moby-Dick.”

The author paints his picture with a detailed brush. We learn much about the unique culture, racial mores, and economy of Nantucket in the early 19th Century, and great detail about whaling.  I had always thought the harpoons were what they killed the leviathans with, but we learn from Philbrick they were merely anchors for harpoon lines that brought the hunters’ boats close enough to stab the quarry with giant spears.  There are many enlightening tidbits about aquatic mammal biology and behavior, how starvation and dehydration affect the human body, and more than I wanted to know about cannibalism.

The whale that seems to have deliberately rammed the Essex was estimated to be 85 feet long and 80 tons. The author notes that sperm whales that size aren’t reported today, and theorizes that selective killing of the more profitable giant whales during this period had an effect on subsequent breeding.  However, he doesn’t think the size was exaggerated, noting that a sperm whale jawbone now in a whaling museum extrapolates to an 80-footer.

Its first strike rocked the ship violently enough to throw sailors off their feet and seriously damage the hull, though the damage might have been repairable.  But the second hit, from a fast running start, was a straight-on head butt which, all survivors confirmed, drove the 238-ton vessel backward and caved in a major portion of the bow.  The monster whale swam off, leaving the ship mortally wounded.

All 20 of the crew got off the ship in one piece, salvaging some provisions, guns, and navigation equipment before the Essex went under. In “Moby-Dick,” that was pretty much the climax of the novel, and sole survivor Ishmael’s rescue was sort of a postscript. However, the aftermath of the Essex’s sinking is really the heart of “In the Heart of the Sea.” In more than three months on the ocean in those little whaling boats, a dozen men died, most winding up in the bellies of the surviving eight.

There are lessons galore in this grim narrative of survival.  There are understandable navigation errors and choices which 20/20 hindsight shows to have been questionable, and in perspective, being led astray by GPS will never seem quite so bad again after reading this. There was also a lesson about hesitation and balancing competing harms: After the initial ramming, the first mate spotted the stunned whale at the stern of the ship, and had a perfect shot to kill it, the great lance in hand. However, he made the conscious decision not to, fearing that in its death throes the huge tail might tear the rudder off the ship.  He would later decide that spearing the beast would have been the lesser of two evils.

Damn. Now I gotta see the movie of the same name, which I hear was well made but so depressing it was not a success in the theaters.

11 COMMENTS

  1. Great post, Mas! I spent some time on Cape Cod as a kid – now you’ve got me all interested in whaling again.

  2. Mas, should your nautical research travels take you to Mystic to visit the Charles W. Morgan, feel free to reach out to me herein and I’d be happy to show you around. Not that I have any connections to the Seaport just that I’ve spent a lot of time that and know the best places to hit after the museum closes. 🙂

  3. The film was classic to me. I did find myself saying “Go, whale!” for a while. So did a lot of others, I am sure. Now I am going to view the movie again. I recall that a pistol was used to some negative purpose, and I need to see again exactly how and why.

    Back in the day, whaling was extremely lucrative, along with fur trapping. A much different time.

    Survivalists say that a lot of us are only a couple of weeks’ disaster time away from cannibalism ourselves.

  4. Mas,
    I can’t figure out where you find the time to read. Well , come to think of it, maybe I do.

  5. Mas,

    Several years ago I saw a documentary about this on a DVD. TOTALLY FASCINATING! I remember that after the ship sank, the nearest islands were thought to be controlled by cannibals, so they went in another direction, and that’s why they starved. I love war stories, and this is just as good, if not better. It is one of those cases where the truth is stranger than fiction, and it is probably an even better story than the fictional “Moby Dick.” It is extremely rare for a ship to be attacked by a whale. Now I want to see the movie!

  6. Wow, quite the tale indeed.

    Needless to say perhaps, yet I am sure most all folks find cannibalism to be…. Distasteful!

  7. If you are around the Long Island area drop by the whaling museum in Huntington. Yes there was a robust whaling industry based out of Long Island ! You can drop by Sagamore Hill and President Theodore Roosevelts gravesite 20 minutes away also. Folks forget that 200 yrs ago NY was a rural area just 20 miles from Wall st. All the way up to the early 20th century farming, hunting, and quiet were the norm. Heck even today you can get some goose and duck hunting in LOL. If it weren’t for the crappy leftist politicans and zombie followers this would be a really nice place….

  8. I read an account of the Essex over twenty years ago. The vast majority of the narrative I read was about the time in the boats after the sinking. It was indeed a depressing story without much heroics other than the will to survive.

    You are correct about the harpoons. The harpoons used to catch the whale have blades that are barbed so they can’t be thrown free. The killing harpoons are metal spikes (without barbs) so they can be used to stab, withdraw, and stab again. The whale either dies of blood loss or the killing harpoon skewering a vital organ.

    When the whale is harpooned using the barbed harpoon, the boat and crew become essentially a drag “float” to make it difficult for the whale to swim away or dive (think of the barrels on the shark in Jaws). The whale with one boat attached could take that boat on a “Nantucket sleighride” until it tired. Then the crew rowed into kill the whale.

    Sometimes you tried to get two or more boats attached to the whale to increase drag and slow the whale faster – especially strong/large ones. The strength of the whale also depended on the species. The sperm whales would give the sailors the longest rides. However, it became progressively more dangerous for the boat crews as you added harpoons and boats to the whale. There was also the danger that the boat crew could be pulled out of site of the mother ship and be lost to recovery. Remember the ship Rachel from Moby Dick.

    I probably will not see the movie because of the depressing footage about surviving the aftermath. No EPIRBs back then.

  9. Here’s another great oceangoing tale, from a different era:

    http://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Sea-Classics-War/dp/1580800467/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459911693&sr=8-1&keywords=cruel+sea

    “A powerful novel of the North Atlantic in World Wat II, this is the story of the British ships Compass Rose and Saltash and of their desparate cat-and-mouse game with Nazi U-boats. First published to great accalim in 1951, The Cruel Sea remains a classic novel of endurance and daring.”

    And it turns out that in the old days, cannibalism was a lot more common than anybody imagined. It’s been shown that even the Anasazi of the American southwest— long held up by anthropologists as an example of a peaceful people— were not only warlike, but engaged in cannibalism as well.

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