Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex
Item
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Identifier
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RB NAN 639.28 C38
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Title
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Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex
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Measurements
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Unknown
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Date Created
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November 1821
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Description
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The title page of “Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex” by Owen Chase. Almost one year to the day of the wreck of the "Essex," first mate Owen Chase published this book. Although Chase kept a log using the pencil and papers from his trunk while in the whaleboat, he is believed to have had a ghostwriter: fellow twenty-three-year-old Nantucketer, William Coffin, Jr., who attended Harvard instead of becoming a whaler. Chase’s “Narrative” does not reflect that he and second mate Matthew Joy convinced Captain Pollard not to return to Nantucket for repairs after the knockdown and not to sail for French Polynesia after the wreck of the “Essex.” While serving aboard the “Acushnet” of Fairhaven in 1841, Herman Melville met Chase’s son, sixteen-year-old William Henry Chase, who was serving aboard whaleship the whaleship "Lima" of Nantucket. Chase lent Melville a copy of his father’s “Narrative.” A decade later, Melville published “Moby-Dick.”
