![]() ![]() This meant only two men would remain to keep Essex while a whale-hunt was in progress, which was not sufficient to safely handle a ship of Essex 's size and type. While sailors fled whaling ships all the time, the desertion was bad news for Captain Pollard because each of the ship's three whaleboats required a crew of six. In September 1820, a sailor named Henry DeWitt deserted at Atacames, reducing the crew of Essex to 20 men. Each whaleboat was led by one of the three officers – Pollard, Chase, and Joy – each of whom then chose his five other crew members. The crew was divided into three groups of six, each of which manned one of the three usable whaleboats whenever whales were sighted the remaining three men stayed aboard to manage Essex. Their spirits were temporarily lifted when Essex began the long spring and summer hunt in the warm waters of the South Pacific Ocean, traveling north along the western coast of South America up to Atacames, in what was then the Spanish-ruled territory of the Royal Audience of Quito (present-day Ecuador). With this and the unsettling earlier incident, the crew began to talk of ill omens. Captain Pollard elected to continue the voyage without replacing the two boats or repairing the damage.Įssex rounded Cape Horn in January 1820 after a transit of five weeks, which was extremely slow. ![]() She lost her topgallant sail and two whaleboats were destroyed, with an additional whaleboat damaged. She was knocked on her beam-ends and nearly sank. ![]() Two days after her departure from Nantucket, Essex was hit by a sudden squall in the Gulf Stream. Captain George Pollard, First Mate Owen Chase, Second Mate Matthew Joy, and the rest of the crew, Barzillai Ray, Charles Ramsdell, Benjamin Lawrence, Obed Hendricks and Owen Coffin, and cabin boy Thomas Nickerson, were all from Nantucket. Among the sailors, there were seven black men: William Bond, Samuel Reed, Richard Peterson, Henry DeWitt, Lawson Thomas, Charles Shorter and Isaiah Sheppard four individuals from places other than Nantucket: Seth Weeks, Joseph West, William Wright, and Isaac Cole and one Englishman named Thomas Chapple. Final voyage Įssex departed from Nantucket on August 12, 1819, on what was expected to be a roughly two-and-a-half-year voyage to the bountiful whaling grounds off the west coast of South America. Essex was equipped with four whaleboats, each about 28 ft (8.5 m) in length, and she had an additional whaleboat below decks. Įssex had recently been totally refitted, but at only 88 feet (27 m) in length, and measuring about 239 tons burthen, she was small for a whaleship. The crew of 21 was mainly white, but a few were free black men. In 1819, at the age of 29, Pollard was one of the youngest men ever to command a whaling ship Chase was 23, and the youngest member of the crew was the cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson, who was 14. and first mate Owen Chase had served together on the ship's previous trip, which had been highly successful and led to their promotions. The tragedy attracted international attention, and inspired Herman Melville to write his famous 1851 novel Moby-Dick.īy the time of her fateful voyage, Essex was already twenty years old, but because so many of her previous voyages had been profitable, she had gained a reputation as a "lucky" vessel. First mate Owen Chase and cabin boy Thomas Nickerson later wrote accounts of the ordeal. Seven crew members were cannibalized before the last of the eight survivors were rescued, more than three months after the sinking of the Essex. When that proved insufficient, members of the crew drew lots to determine whom they would sacrifice so that the others could live. The men suffered severe dehydration, starvation, and exposure on the open ocean, and the survivors eventually resorted to eating the bodies of the crewmen who had died. Thousands of miles from the coast of South America with little food and water, the 21-man crew was forced to make for land in the ship's surviving whaleboats. In 1820, while at sea in the southern Pacific Ocean under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., the ship was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale. A whale striking Essex on Novem(sketched by Thomas Nickerson)Īmesbury, Massachusetts, United StatesĪttacked and sunk by a sperm whale, November 20, 1820įour whaleboats, 20–30 feet (6.1–9.1 m), plus one spareĮssex was an American whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. ![]()
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