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In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick – A Review
Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex was published not quite a decade ago, so we are a bit late in reviewing it. (Our excuse is that the blog is only about one year old.) Nevertheless, this seems like a good day to review the book, exactly 189 years from the day that a rogue sperm whale attacked and sank the whale ship Essex.
On this day in 1820, at eight in the morning, the lookout on the whaleship Essex, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, saw spouts. As author Nathaniel Philbrick writes, “It was good day for killing whales.”
It did not turn out to be so. Three whale boats were launched and two killed their prey while the third was damaged by a harpooned whale. Not long after they hauled the damaged boat aboard the Essex, an 80 foot long sperm whale rammed the ship twice and sank it. Philbrick writes, “Never before in the entire history of the Nantucket whale fishery, had a whale been known to attack a ship.”
This began an epic voyage by the crew of the Essex across the Pacific, twenty men in three whale boats, which would end in cannibalism and near madness. Only eight would survive. The sinking of the Essex would be the inspiration for the Melville’s classic Moby Dick.
Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex retells the once famous but now largely forgotten story of the unlucky ship, from its departure from Nantucket to its sinking, the horrific voyage in the whale boats and beyond. Using original documents and diaries, Philbrick recreates the world of the indomitable whalers of Nantucket and with great skill retells the difficult story of the sinking of the Essex and its aftermath.
Once the crew of the Essex found themselves in the three crowded boats they made a fundamental mistake. Rather than sailing for the closest land, the islands of the Marquesas, they decided to sail south then west to South America. They knew almost nothing about the islands but had heard that the Marquesas were inhabited by savages who practiced cannibalism. Ironically, their choice to take the longer course would end in cannibalism by the crew of the Essex themselves.
Almost as fascinating is the account of the survivors return to Nantucket. The Captain George Pollard was given the command of another whaling ship, the Two Brothers, the highest compliment that could be paid to him under the circumstances. Unfortunately, the ship was caught in storm and lost on reefs west of Hawaii. He would return to Nantucket but would never go to sea again. Instead he became the town’s night watchman, a position he held until his death.
The Essex’s mate, Owen Chase would write a book about the sinking of the ship. Though he initially had to sail out of New Bedford, after several successful voyages in command of a New Bedford whaler, he was accepted back on Nantucket and given command of the whaling ship Charles Carroll.
In 1840, two decades after the sinking of the Essex, a young sailor named Herman Melville in the Pacific on the whaler Acushnet, met William Henry Chase, Owen Chase’s teenage son, who gave him a copy of his father’s book. Melville remembered, “The reading of this wondrous story upon the landless sea, and so close to the the very latitude of the shipwreck had a surprising effect upon me.” When Melville’s novel Moby Dick was published in 1851, it was a critical and financial failure.
Fortunately Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea received a warmer reception. It was a winner of the National Book Award in Nonfiction, was included in Time Magazine’s Best Books of the Year 2000 and was included in Fortune’s 75 The Smartest Books We Know. The awards are well deserved. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a gripping and fascinating book. Highly recommended.
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4 Responses to “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick – A Review”
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I couldn’t put it down. An amazingly well written book.
Philbrick is a wonderful writer.
Wow! I never knew that the classic Moby Dick was inspired by a true story. “The sinking of the Essex would be the inspiration for the Melville’s classic Moby Dick.”
It appears that Moby Dick was inspired by at least two true stories. We know that Melville was given a copy of the book written by Owen Chase, the mate on the Essex, around 1840, which provided Melville with the ending of the novel.
Melville appears to have merged the story of the Essex with the account of “Mocha Dick,” a white sperm whale that was hunted in the Pacific from around 1810 to 1838 when he was finally killed. Mocha Dick was a large sperm whale at around 70 feet long but was still smaller than the whale which sank the Essex which was said to be roughly eighty feet overall.
As bizarre as it may seem, most of the events in Moby Dick are based on factual accounts. Mocha Dick was a white whale, which was hunted for decades by Nantucket whalers before it was finally killed, and a sperm whale did indeed ram and sink the whale ship Essex. The characters and structure of Melville’s masterwork are all his own, but the story sticks closely to recorded history.