The best known is Chase's, www.northcarolinashipwrecks.blogspot.com/. Thomas Chapple, an Englishman, seems to have become a missionary preacher, and died of plague-fever on Timor. [11] On the leeward side of Essex, Chase's whaleboat harpooned a whale, but its tail struck the boat and opened up a seam, forcing the crew to cut the harpoon line and return to Essex for repairs. VideoBushfire koalas going back to the wild, Three elders reveal what it takes to be a leader. After losing a timber, the crew of one boat had to lean to one side to raise the other side out of the water until another boat was able to draw close, allowing a sailor to nail a piece of wood over the hole. The sailors captured them alive and allowed some of them to roam the ship at will; the rest they kept in the hold. For the remainder of their journey, Pollard and Ramsdell survived by gnawing on Coffin's and Ray's bones. When Essex finally reached the promised fishing grounds thousands of miles west of the coast of South America, the crew was unable to find any whales for days. By a cruel irony, it was Pollard's 17-year-old cousin, Owen Coffin, who drew the shortest straw, and was shot by Charles Ramsdell, who drew the next shortest. Examining the charts, the officers deduced that 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 Chase, voiced their fears that the islands might be inhabited by cannibals and voted to sail east instead, for South America. .css-8h1dth-Link{font-family:ReithSans,Helvetica,Arial,freesans,sans-serif;font-weight:700;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;color:#FFFFFF;}.css-8h1dth-Link:hover,.css-8h1dth-Link:focus{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}Read about our approach to external linking. Nickerson wrote this account 56 years after the sinking, in 1876, and it was lost until 1960; the Nantucket Historical Association published it in 1984. On January 4, 1821, they estimated that they had drifted too far south of Easter Island to reach it and decided to make for Más a Tierra island instead, 1,818 miles (2,926 km) to the east and 419 miles (674 km) west of South America. Within three days they had exhausted the crabs and birds they had stockpiled from Henderson in preparation for the voyage, leaving only a small reserve of the bread previously salvaged from Essex. His head about half out of the water, and in that way he came upon us, and again struck the ship. I turned around and saw him about one hundred rods [500 m or 550 yards] directly ahead of us, coming down with twice his ordinary speed of around 24 knots (44 km/h), and it appeared with tenfold fury and vengeance in his aspect. He, like Joy, was buried at sea. On the 27 January, Isiah Shepard died followed a day later by Samuel Reed. Captain Pollard elected to continue the voyage without replacing the two boats or repairing the damage. However, worse was yet to come. US voters deliver verdict after bitter race, The Countdown: Election anxiety? In September 1820, a sailor named Henry DeWitt[7] deserted at Atacames, reducing the crew of the Essex to 20 men. Later in his life, he began hiding food in the attic of his Nantucket house on Orange Street and was eventually institutionalized. Both the Captain and the First Mate of the, Ironically, the success of previous voyages had also left the. The other surviving crew members met various fates: As well as inspiring much of American author Herman Melville's classic 1851 novel Moby-Dick, the story of the Essex tragedy has been dramatized in film, television, and music: The Essex is not the only ship known to have been attacked by a whale: Coordinates: 0°41′S 118°00′W / 0.683°S 118.000°W / -0.683; -118.000, Learn how and when to remove this template message, https://www.galapagos.org/newsroom/floreana-tortoise-species-resurrection/, "Surviving the Essex Disaster (Part 3 of 3)", "Resurrecting The Tale That Inspired and Sank Melville", "Maritime Topics on stamps, Whaling Part 1", "Whale baleen found in hull of sunken sailboat", In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Essex_(whaleship)&oldid=986217979, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Four whaleboats, 20–30 feet (6.1–9.1 m), plus one spare. [17] On March 17, Pollard and Ramsdell were reunited with Chase, Lawrence, and Nickerson. While Meville was inspired by Pollard's adventures, the unlucky seafarer's character is not thought to have been the basis for the novel's obsessive Capt Ahab. What does developing a Covid-19 vaccine look like? In 1819, the whale-ship Essex set sail from Nantucket. On 20 December, land was spied, a small rocky outcrop that Pollard and Chase took to be Ducie Island.
It lay motionless on the surface facing the ship and then began to swim towards the vessel, picking up speed by shallow diving. A whaleboat was later found washed up on Ducie Island with the skeletons of three people inside. After finding the area's population of whales exhausted, the crew encountered other whalers who told them of a vast newly discovered hunting ground, known as the "offshore ground", located between 5 and 10 degrees south latitude and between 105 and 125 degrees west longitude, about 2,500 nautical miles (4,600 km) to the south and west. Try these moments, In pictures: Trump and Biden through the years. In In the Heart of the Sea, author Nathaniel Philbrick speculated that it may have first struck the boat accidentally, or have had its curiosity aroused by the sound of a hammer as a whaler worked to repair a damaged whaleboat by nailing in a replacement board. Pollard and Ramsdell and been 95 days in an open boat; Chase, Lawrence and Nickerson for 90.