44 pages • 1 hour read
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Nantucket”
Content Warning: This section references survival cannibalism as well as violence against animals.
In the summer of 1819, Thomas Nickerson and his friends Barzillai Ray, Owen Coffin, and Charles Ramsdell were preparing to go to sea in the whaleship Essex, which would soon set sail from Nantucket. Nantucket was fast becoming the US’s central whaling hub, especially thanks to the industry’s shift from hunting right whales to hunting sperm whales, which had become the “single-minded pursuit” of those who called the island home (6). While whale hunting had initially been done either from the shore or in small whaling boats that hugged the coastline, the industry now used large ships that could sail for months and years at a time. This allowed whalers to hunt sperm whales, which stayed farther out at sea but were more valuable thanks to their larger size and better quality of blubber.
Nineteenth-century Nantucket was a unique place on account of its idiosyncratic cultural and religious identity. The island was largely made up of families who had lived there for generations, and many belonged to the Quaker religious community. The island’s dedication to whaling also contributed to its singular cultural identity: Most residents were deeply religious and dedicated to pacifism, most would marry young and have children, and most women would become used to keeping one another company without their husbands (who would be gone for two or three years at a time on expeditions). Since whaling was dangerous, the community was also quite familiar with the experience of losing their young men: “[D]eath was a fact of life with which all Nantucketers were thoroughly familiar” (14).
The Essex was not stocked as well as she could have been thanks to the shipowners attempting to increase their profits. On August 5, the ship set out into the bay. Since the Essex was an older ship captained by a first-time captain, her crew did not consist of the most experienced men. Somewhat unusually, several crewmembers were not from Nantucket; those outside the Nantucket community tended to see whaling as a dangerous and undesirable venture, “the lowest rung on the maritime ladder” (25). By August 11, however, the crew was assembled and prepared to set off on its journey.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Knockdown”
George Pollard arrived aboard the Essex on the morning of August 12: “At twenty-eight, Pollard was a young, but not spectacularly young, first-time captain” (28). Alongside Pollard was the first mate, Owen Chase; the two had been sailing together for years. While Pollard came from a family of whalers, Chase’s father had been a farmer, which “fired [Chase] with more than the usual amount of ambition” (30). Chase made it his business to see to it that the crew was handled with the proper amount of authority. This being Chase’s third mission, he was eager to set himself apart and prepare for the day when he too would be made a captain, resulting in an almost overnight transformation:
Nickerson saw Owen Chase change from a perfectly reasonable young man with a new wife named Peggy to a bully who had no qualms about using force to obtain obedience and who swore in a manner that shocked [the youngest crew members] (32).
Being a young and newly assembled crew, the men of the Essex initially had difficulty working together, but this faded as they got used to one another. During the first days on board, the crew divided up duties and groups; they determined who would take different watches and which men would crew the various whaleboats. The men also had their first taste of the leadership style of George Pollard, finding him much more agreeable than the fiery first mate.
The ship made good time for several days, but, on August 15, she encountered a storm for which the crew was unprepared. Pollard failed to make the necessary adjustments in time, and the storm nearly sunk the Essex. The crew managed to save her, but not before the ship was severely damaged and three of the five whaling boats washed away or destroyed, leaving them with only two left for their work. While Pollard wanted to return to Nantucket for repairs, Chase objected and got his way: “The captain’s will was normally the law of the ship. But instead of ignoring his two younger mates, Pollard paused to consider their arguments” (43). The crew acquiesced to continuing on the journey, but they were gravely upset at the events that had occurred so early in their journey.
Chapter 3 Summary: “First Blood”
Two weeks went by, and the ship arrived at Boavista Island, where the crew spotted a beached ship. They purchased the single whaleboat the ship still possessed and continued on their way. It took the crew almost three more months of sailing before they spotted their first whale. Launching the whaleboats, the three crews set off for their first hunt. This was a difficult and dangerous process: The crew needed to lower the whaleboats as quickly as possible and then row out to the whales, where the harpooner would attempt to strike one. This would not kill the whale but would attach it to the boat by means of a rope tied to the harpoon. The whale would then drag the boat, often for several miles, until it tired itself out enough for the boat to come alongside and deliver a fatal blow. In this case, the boat helmed by Chase was the first to arrive within striking distance, but before they could strike the lead whale a second whale surfaced right beneath their boat, turning all the men into the sea.
While nobody was hurt, it took the crew several days to repair the boat and sight another whale. This second hunt was more successful than the first, and Chase delivered the whale back to the Essex by nightfall. Securing the whale, the crew hoisted it up onto the cutting stage and began to dissect and process it. After stripping the whale of all the blubber, they decapitated it to extract the spermaceti, the richest and most valuable oil, found only in the cavity of the sperm whale’s head.
At this point, the Essex was nearing Antarctica and had only captured a single whale. Anxiety and restlessness had begun to set in. One night the crew, sick of the rationing of provisions, decided to confront the captain. This was a grave breach in etiquette: “[T]he men had dared to violate the sacred space of the quarterdeck, normally reserved for the officers. Even if the crew’s anger might be justified, this was a challenge to the ship’s authority” (60). Laying into the crew with previously unknown anger, Pollard proved himself worthy of the title of captain and ensured that he would never have to deal with that manner of insubordination again.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
In telling the tragedy of the whaleship Essex, the author intersperses the narrative with historical context concerning the intricacies of whaling, the economic conditions of the sailors’ home in Nantucket, and other details regarding The Dependence of Nantucket on the Whaling Industry. This gives the reader periodic respites from the harrowing details of the disaster while heightening awareness of the skill necessary for such an endeavor. Though Philbrick does not gloss over the mistakes that played a role in the Essex’s fate, his account is generally sympathetic, and he impresses on readers that the crew was not incompetent.
One of the most detailed expositions occurs in the first chapter, which details Nantucket’s background in the founding of the nation and its whaling industry. Philbrick emphasizes the extent to which Nantucketers’ shared business forged deep bonds of community. Perhaps the only thing that surpassed Nantucketers’ devotion to whaling was their devotion to their fellow Nantucketers. The community’s existence also solidified a community identity as distinct from mainland Massachusetts: “Nantucketers developed a British sense of themselves as a distinct and superior people, privileged citizens of what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the ‘Nation of Nantucket’” (7). The islanders saw themselves as set apart, and this bond would prove vital in determining who would survive the sinking of the Essex.
Even so, Philbrick does not suggest the islanders were sentimental: The fact that they stuck together did not preclude them from considering profits the main concern of their whaling expeditions. As a new and relatively young captain, Pollard would have felt the weight of such expectations—a fact that likely played into his risky venture into the storm that destroyed several of their whaleboats. More important, Philbrick suggests, was Pollard’s passivity in the storm’s aftermath, when he gave in to Chase’s unwillingness to return to Nantucket to make repairs. This first point of conflict in the journey foreshadows events to come. The Essex would continue to meet with disaster, Pollard and Chase would continue to be at odds, and Pollard would continue to defer to his more forceful but perhaps less judicious second in command. Though Philbrick does not blame either man for the tragedy, he does suggest that their personalities were ill-suited to their roles, at least opposite one another.
The author’s attention to the details of how whales were captured and processed again underscores how treacherous and difficult hunting whales really was. Whaling crews sometimes sailed for months on end without a single whale sighting, and the sighting was only the beginning of the real work. Hunting such large creatures in small whaleboats was extremely dangerous; although the sinking of the Essex was unprecedented, the damaging of Chase’s whaleboat in its first hunt was not unusual (and illustrates why the loss of whaleboats during the first storm would have been a blow even before the crew was obliged to abandon ship). The process of rendering a whale carcass could last days, and the author’s description of it highlights the difference between experienced whalemen and the novices. The first time a whale was processed served as a kind of initiation rite where the greenhand sailors made their mistakes but joined the brotherhood of those more experienced.
In his attention to Nantucket’s history and the months before the Essex’s sinking, Philbrick begins to develop the theme of Humans’ Relationship With, and Vulnerability to, Nature. On the one hand, whalers’ ability to kill and process some of the largest creatures on the planet serves as a microcosm for humanity’s relentless extraction of natural resources (especially as the Industrial Revolution got underway). However, Nantucketers’ economic dependence on the whaling industry and the physical dangers of life onboard a whaling ship illustrate the limits of human efforts to dominate nature.
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By Nathaniel Philbrick
