My First Voyage at Sea And Subsequent Loss of the Ship Essex
Item
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Identifier
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SV-106/1
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Title
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My First Voyage at Sea And Subsequent Loss of the Ship Essex
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Measurements
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Unknown
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Date Created
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ca. 1870
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Description
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A book with a green and blue marbled cover with worn edges and a damaged spine. Thomas Nickerson, the “Essex”’s cabin boy, wrote his own account of the sinking of the “Essex” in the 1870s on the suggestion of a writer, Leon Lewis, who may have been a guest at Nickerson’s boarding house. Although Nickerson sent Lewis the draft in 1876, it was not published until more than a century later. Some time before his death in 1920, Lewis gave the draft to his neighbor in Penn Yan, New York, Darius Ogden. Ogden’s grandson James N. Finch inherited the draft upon Ogden’s death around 1960. After reading the draft, Finch’s wife, Ann W. Finch, contacted whaling expert, author, and curator Edouard A. Stackpole, whose book on whaling, “The Sea Hunters,” she had read and from which she recognized the story of the “Essex.” Stackpole confirmed that the draft was Nickerson’s and the Nantucket Historical Association published it in 1984.
