Survivors of the whaleship Essex which was sunk by a whale sailed 4,600 miles starting out in three 25' whaleboats........with inadequate
food and
water. It took them about 90 days...........
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The ship sank 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) west of
South America. After spending two days salvaging what supplies they could, the twenty sailors set out in the three small whaleboats with wholly inadequate supplies of
food and fresh water. The closest known islands, the
Marquesas, were more than 1,200 mi (1,900 km) to the west and
Captain Pollard intended to make for them but the crew, led by Owen Chase, feared the islands may be inhabited by cannibals and voted to make for
South America. Unable to sail against the
Trade winds, the boats would need to sail south for 1,000 mi (1,600 km) before they could use the Westerlies to turn towards South America, which would still lie another 3,000 mi (4,800 km) to the east.
Food and water was rationed from the beginning, most of the food had been soaked in seawater and this was eaten first despite it increasing their thirst. It took around two weeks to consume the contaminated food and by this time the survivors were rinsing their mouths with seawater and drinking their own urine. Never designed for long voyages, all the whaleboats had been roughly repaired and
leaks were a constant and serious problem. After losing a timber, the crew of one boat had to lean to one side to raise the other side out of the water, however another boat was able to draw close and a sailor nailed a piece of
wood over the hole. Literally within hours of the crew beginning to die of thirst the boats landed on uninhabited Henderson Island, within the modern-day British territory of the Pitcairn Islands. Had they landed on Pitcairn, 104 miles (167 km) to the S/W, they would have received help: it was habitable and the survivors of the HMS Bounty still lived there. On Henderson Island they found a small freshwater spring and the
men gorged on birds, eggs, crabs, and peppergrass. However, after one week, they had largely exhausted the island's food resources and on December 26 concluded that they would starve if they remained much longer. Three men, William Wright, Seth Weeks and Thomas Chapple, who were the only white members of the crew who were not natives of
Nantucket, opted to stay behind on Henderson. The remaining Essex crewmen resumed the journey on New Year's Eve hoping to reach Easter Island. Within three days they had exhausted the crabs and birds they had collected for the voyage, leaving only a small reserve of bread, salvaged from the Essex. On January 4, they estimated that they had drifted too far south of Easter Island to reach it and decided to make for Más a Tierra island, 1,818 miles (2,926 km) to the east and 419 miles (674 km) west of South America. One by one, the men began to die.
On January 10, Matthew Joy died and on the following day the boat carrying Owen Chase, Richard
Peterson, Isaac Cole, Benjamin Lawrence and Thomas Nickerson became separated from the others during a squall.
Peterson died on January 18 and like Joy, was sewn in his clothes and buried at sea, as was the custom. On February 8, Isaac Cole died but with food running out they kept his body and, after a discussion, the men resorted to cannibalism in order to survive. By February 15 the three remaining men had again run out of food and on February 18, were spotted and rescued by the British whaleship Indian 90 days after the sinking of the Essex.
Obed Hendricks's boat exhausted their food supplies on January 14 with Pollard's men exhausting theirs on January 21. Lawson Thomas had died on January 20 and it was now decided they had no choice but to keep the body for food. Charles Shorter died on January 23, Isaiah Shepard on January 27 and Samuel Reed on January 28. Later that day the two boats separated with the one carrying Obed Hendricks, Joseph West and William Bond never to be seen again.
By February 1 the food had run out and the situation in Captain Pollard's boat became quite critical. The men drew lots to determine who would be sacrificed for the survival of the crew. A young man named Owen Coffin, Captain Pollard's 17 year old cousin, whom he had sworn to protect, drew the black spot. Pollard allegedly offered to protect his cousin but Coffin is said to have replied "No, I like my lot as well as any other." Lots were drawn again to determine who would be Coffin's executioner. His young friend, Charles Ramsdell, drew the black spot. Ramsdell shot Coffin, and his remains were consumed by Pollard, Barzillai Ray, and Charles Ramsdell. On February 11, Ray also died. For the remainder of their journey, Pollard and Ramsdell survived by gnawing on the bones of Coffin and Ray. They were rescued when almost within sight of the South American coast by the
Nantucket whaleship Dauphin on February 23, 95 days after the Essex sank. Both men by that time were so completely dissociative that they did not even notice the Dauphin alongside them and became terrified by seeing their rescuers.
Pollard, Chase, Ramsdell, Lawrence, and Nickerson were reunited in the port of Valparaíso, where they informed officials there of their three shipmates stranded on Henderson Island. A ship destined on a trans-Pacific
passage was ordered to look for the men on Henderson. Although close to death, the three men were eventually rescued.
By the time the last of the eight survivors were rescued on April 5, 1821 the corpses of seven fellow sailors had been consumed. All eight returned to the sea within months of their return to Nantucket. Herman Melville later speculated that all would have survived had they followed Captain Pollard's recommendation and sailed west.
Captain George Pollard, Jr. returned to sea in early 1822 to captain the whaleship Two Brothers. After it was wrecked on the French Frigate Shoals during a storm off the coast of
Hawaii on his first voyage, he joined a merchant vessel which was in turn also wrecked off the Sandwich Islands (Hawaiian Islands) shortly after. Now considered a "Jonah" (unlucky), no ship owner would trust him to sail on a ship again and he was forced to retire. He became Nantucket's night watchman. Every November 20, he would lock himself in his room and fast in memory of the men of the Essex.
First Mate Owen Chase returned to Nantucket on June 11, 1821 to find he had a 14-month-old daughter he had never seen. Four months later he had completed an account of the disaster, the Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing
Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex; this was used by Herman Melville as one of the inspirations for his novel Moby-****. In December he sailed as first mate on the whaler
Florida and then as captain of the Winslow for each subsequent voyage until he had his own whaler, the Charles Carrol, built. Chase remained at sea for 19 years, only returning home for short periods every two or three years, each time fathering a child. His first two wives died while he was at sea. He divorced his third wife when he found she had given birth 16 months after he had last seen her, although he subsequently brought up the child as his own. In September 1840, two months after the divorce was finalised, he married for the fourth and final time and retired from whaling. Memories of the harrowing ordeal haunted Chase. He suffered terrible headaches and nightmares. Later in his life, Chase began hiding food in the attic of his Nantucket house on Orange Street and was eventually institutionalized.
The
cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson, became a captain in the Merchant
Service and later wrote another account of the sinking titled The Loss of the Ship "Essex" Sunk by a Whale and the Ordeal of the Crew in Open Boats which was not published until 1984 by the Nantucket Historical Association. Nickerson wrote his account late in his life and it was
lost until 1960. It was not until 1980, when it came into the hands of Nantucket whaling expert Edouard Stackpole, that its significance was realized.
Charles Ramsdell captained the whaleship General Jackson before his
retirement. Benjamin Lawrence went on to captain the whaleships Dromo and Huron before retiring to become a farmer. William Wright returned to whaling and drowned during a
hurricane in the West Indies. Seth Weeks retired to
Cape Cod. Thomas Chapple is believed to have become a missionary preacher.
Most of the survivors at some time or another wrote accounts of the disaster, some of which differ considerably on details regarding the behavior of various survivors.
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