The Sinking of the Whaleship Essex

While hunting whales almost 2,000 miles off the coast of Peru in the newly-discovered “Offshore Ground” in November 1820, the whaleship Essex of Nantucket, Massachusetts, was attacked twice within ten minutes by an 85-foot-long bull sperm whale. The Essex sank and the twenty men who comprised the crew set off in three whaleboats. The ship’s first mate, 21-year-old Owen Chase, and second mate, 26-year-old Matthew Joy, convinced her captain, 28-year-old George Pollard, Jr., to sail more than 3,000 miles to South America, against the east-to-west winds that blow north and south of the equator, rather than 2,000 miles to French Polynesia, fearing cannibals that were rumored to inhabit the islands. After three months, eight men were rescued. Three had survived by staying on Henderson Island, an uninhabited island in the Pitcairn Islands group, which they’d landed on one month after the Essex sank. The other five survived first by eating their dead crewmates and then by drawing lots. The wreck of the Essex inspired Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick; or, the Whale.

I was introduced to the story of the Essex by my late stepfather, who gave me his copy of In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick while visiting during the Winter Break of my sophomore year at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). One of my final projects for the Fall Semester was a video about my experience as a counselor at the sailing camp I attended growing up and the damage it did to my love of sailing. The instructor whose class the video was for suggested I visit the New Bedford Whaling Museum half an hour away in New Bedford, Massachusetts to learn what I might have in common with the whalers of the Golden Age of Yankee Whaling, so I must have told my stepfather about the museum for him to think of giving me Philbrick’s book. I think I read it in one night, maybe two. 

The Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) has its own Whaling Museum, which maintains an online exhibition about the wreck of the Essex entitled “Stove by a Whale.” However, “Stove by a Whale” seems to assume visitors know what life was like aboard a whaleship - all that’s written on the topic is that “whaling was a dangerous and dirty business.” Furthermore, “Stove by a Whale” doesn’t quite convey the drama that plagued the Essex’s voyage from the beginning.

This collection is something of a remix of “Stove by a Whale” and an appetizer for Nathaniel Philbrick’s book. In addition to items by and about survivors of the wreck, some of which appear in “Stove by a Whale”, it includes other items from the Whaling Museum’s and NHA Research Library’s collections which are accompanied by descriptions illustrating life aboard a whaleship in the early 19th century. The Essex is as worthy of our fascination as the Titanic, the Endurance, and even the Edmund Fitzgerald.