02 - Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex by Owen Chase

Owen Chase (October 7, 1797 – March 7, 1869) served as the First Mate of the ill-fated whale ship Essex, which met a tragic fate when it was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale on October 28, 1820. In the aftermath, Chase penned the gripping account titled Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex, published in 1821. This harrowing tale not only chronicles the desperate survival of the crew but also served as a profound inspiration for Herman Melvilles iconic novel, Moby-Dick. (Summary from Wikipedia)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section two of the Shipwreck of the Whales ship Essex
by Owen Chase. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Recording by Phil Schamp, Chapter one the outbound voyage. The
town of Nantucket in the state of Massachusetts contains about
eight thousand inhabitants. Nearly a third part of the population

(00:23):
are Quakers, and they are taken together a very industrious
and enterprising people on this island are owned about one
hundred vessels of all descriptions engaged in the whaling trade,
giving constant employment and support to upwards of sixteen hundred
hardy seamen, a class of people proverbial for their intrepidy.

(00:45):
This fishery is not carried on to any extent from
any other part of the United States, except from the
town of New Bedford, directly opposite to Nantucket, where are
owned probably twenty sail. A voyage generally lasts about two
years and a half and with an entire uncertainty of success.
Sometimes they are repaid with speedy voyages and profitable cargoes,

(01:09):
and at others they drag out a listless and disheartening
cruise without scarcely making the expenses of an outfit the
business is considered a very hazardous one, arising from unavoidable
accidents in carrying on an exterminating warfare against those great
Leviathans of the deep. And indeed a Nantucket man is

(01:31):
on all occasions fully sensible of the honor and merit
of his profession, no doubt, because he knows that his laurels,
like the soldiers, are plucked from the brink of danger.
Numerous anecdotes are related of the wayal men of Nantucket,
and stories of hair breadth scapes and sudden and wonderful
preservation are handed down amongst them with the fidelity and

(01:54):
no doubt, many of them with the characteristic fictions of
the ancient legendary tales. A spirit of adventure amongst the
sons of other relatives of those immediately concerned in it
takes possession of their minds at a very early age,
captivated with the tough stories of the elder seamen, and
seduced as well by the natural desire of seeing foreign

(02:17):
countries as by the hopes of gain, they launch forth
six or eight thousand miles from home into an almost
untraversed ocean, and spend from two to three years of
their lives in scenes of constant peril, labor and watchfulness.
The profession is one of great ambition and full of
honorable excitement. A tame man is never known amongst them,

(02:41):
and the coward is marked with that peculiar aversion that
distinguishes our public naval service. There are perhaps no people
of superior corporeal powers, and it has been truly said
of them that they possess a natural aptitude which seems
rather the lineal spirit of them fathers than the effects

(03:01):
of any experience. The town itself during the war was
naturally to have been expected on the decline, but with
the return of peace it took a fresh start and
a spirit for carrying on. The fishery received a renewed
and very considerable excitement. Large capitals are now embarked, and

(03:22):
some of the finest ships that our country can boast
of are employed in it. The increased demand within a
few years past from the spermaceti manufactories has induced companies
and individuals in different parts of the Union to become
engaged in the business. And if the future consumption of
the manufactured article bear any proportion to that of the

(03:45):
few past years, this species of commerce will bid fair
to become the most profitable and extensive that our country possesses.
From the accounts of those that were in the early
stages of the fishery concerned in it, it would appear
that the whales have been driven, like the beasts of
the forest before the march of civilization, into remote and

(04:06):
more unfrequented seas, until now they are followed by the
enterprise and perseverance of our seamen, even to the distant
coasts of Japan. The ship Essex, commanded by Captain George
Polland Junior, was fitted out at Nantucket and sailed on
the twelfth day of August eighteen nineteen for the Pacific

(04:26):
Ocean on a waggling voyage. Of this ship, I was
first mate. She had lately undergone a thorough repair in
her upper works, and was at that time, in all respects,
a sound, substantial vessel. She had a crew of twenty
one men, and was viddled and provided for two years
and a half. We left the coast of America with

(04:49):
a fine breeze and steered for the Western Islands. On
the second day out. While sailing moderately on our course
in the Gulf Stream, a sudden squall of wind struck
the ship from the southwest and knocked her completely on
her be men's stove. One of our boats entirely destroyed
two others, and threw down the camboose. We distinctly saw

(05:11):
the approach of this gust, but miscalculated altogether as to
the strength and violence of it. It struck the ship
about three points off the weather quarter, at the moment
that the man at the helm was in the act
of putting her away to run before it. In an
instant she was knocked down with her yards in the water,
and before hardly a moment of time was allowed for reflection,

(05:34):
she gradually came to the wind and righted. The squall
was accompanied with vivid flashes of lightning and heavy and
repeated claps of thunder. The whole ship's crew were for
a short time thrown into the utmost consternation and confusion.
But fortunately the violence of the squall was all contained
in the first gust of the wind, and it soon

(05:57):
gradually abated and became fine weather again. We repaired our
damage with little difficulty and continued on our course. With
the loss of the two boats. On the thirtieth of August,
we made the island of Floros, one of the western
group called the Azores. We lay off and on the
island for two days, during which time our boats landed

(06:19):
and obtained the supply of vegetables and a few hogs.
From this place, we took the northeast trade wind, and
in sixteen days made the Isle of May, one of
the Cape de Vered. As we were sailing along the
shore of this island, we discovered a ship stranded on
the beach, and from her appearance, took her to be
a whaler. Having lost two of our own boats, and

(06:42):
presuming that this vessel had probably some belonging to her
that might have been saved, we determined to ascertain the
name of the ship, and endeavored to supply, if possible,
the loss of our boats from her. We accordingly stood
in towards the port or landing place. After a short time,
three men were discovered coming out to us in a
whale boat. In a few moments, they were alongside and

(07:05):
informed us that the wreck was the Archimedes of New
York Captain George B. Coffin, which vessel had struck on
a rock near the island about a fortnight previously. That
all hands were saved by running the ship on shore,
and that the captain and crew had gone home, we
purchased the whale boat of these people, obtained some few

(07:26):
more pigs, and again set sail. Our passage, thence to
Cape Horn, was not distinguished for any incident worthy of note.
We made the longitude of the cape about the eighteenth
of December, having experienced head winds for nearly the whole distance.
We anticipated a moderate time in passing this noted land,
from the season of the year at which we were

(07:48):
there being considered the most favorable. But instead of this
we experienced heavy westerly gales and a most tremendous sea
that detained us off the cape five weeks before we
got sufficiently to the westward to enable us to put away.
On the passage of this famous cape, it may be
observed that strong westerly gales and a heavy sea are

(08:10):
its almost universal attendants. The prevalence and constancy of this
wind and sea necessarily produce a rapid current by which
vessels are set to leeward, and it is not without
some favorable slant of wind that they can, in many
cases get round at all. The difficulties and dangers of
the passage are proverbial, but as far as my own

(08:33):
observation extends, and which the numerous reports of the whalemen corroborate,
you can always rely upon a long and regular sea.
And although the gales may be very strong and stubborn,
as they undoubtedly are, they are not known to blow
with the destructive violence that characterizes some of the tornadoes
of the western Atlantic Ocean. On the seventeenth of January

(08:57):
eighteen twenty, we arrived at the island of Saint Mary's,
lying on the coast of Chile in the latitude thirty
six degrees fifty nine minutes south longitude seventy three degrees
forty one minutes west. This island is a sort of
rendezvous for whalers, from which they obtained their wood and water,

(09:18):
and between which and the mainland, a distance of about
ten miles, they frequently cruise for a species of whale
called the right whale. Our object in going there was
merely to get the news. We sailed thence to the
island of Massafuera, where we got some wood and fish,
and thence for the cruising ground along the coast of

(09:38):
Chile in search of the spermaceti whale. We took there
eight which yielded us two hundred and fifty barrels of oyale,
and the season having by this time expired, we changed
our cruising ground to the coast of Peru. We obtained
there five hundred and fifty barrels. After going into the
small port of Decamus, and replace our wood and water.

(10:01):
On the second October we set sail for the Galopagus Islands.
We came to Anchor and laid seven days off Hood's Island,
one of the group, during which time we stopped a
leak which we had discovered, and obtained three hundred turtle.
We then visited Charles Island, where we procured sixty more.
These turtle are a most delicious food and average in

(10:24):
weight generally about one hundred pounds, but many of them
weigh upwards of eight hundred. With these ships usually supply
themselves for a great length of time and make a
great saving of other provisions. They neither eat nor drink,
nor is the least pains taken with them. They are
strewed over the deck, thrown under foot, or packed away

(10:46):
in the hold as it suits convenience. They will live
upwards of a year without food or water, but soon
die in a cold climate. We left Charles Island on
the twenty third of October and steered off to the
westward in search of Wales in latitude one degree zero
minutes south longitude one hundred and eighteen degrees west. On

(11:09):
the sixteenth of November, in the afternoon, we lost a
boat during our work in a shoal of whales. I
was in the boat myself with five others, and was
standing in the forepart with the harpoon in my hand,
well braced, expecting every instant to catch sight of one
of the shoal which we were in, that I might strike.

(11:29):
But judge of my astonishment and dismay at finding myself
suddenly thrown up in the air, my companions scattered about
me and the boat fast filling with water. A whale
had come up directly under her, and with one dash
of his tail, had stove her bottom in and strewed
us in every direction around her. We, however, with little difficulty,

(11:51):
got safely on the wreck and clung there until one
of the other boats which had been engaged in the
shoal came to our assistance and took us off. Strange
to tell. Not a man was injured by this accident.
Thus it happens very frequently in the whaling business that
the boats are stove, ores are poons and lines, broken,

(12:12):
ankles and wrists, sprained, boats upset, and whole crews left
for hours in the water, without any of these accidents
extending to the loss of life. We are so much
accustomed to the continual recurrence of such scenes as these
that we become familiarized to them, and consequently always feel
that confidence and self possession which teaches us every expedient

(12:35):
in danger, and inures the body as well as the mind,
to fatigue, privation, and peril, in frequent cases exceeding belief.
It is this danger and hardship that makes the sailor. Indeed,
it is the distinguishing qualification amongst us, and is a
common boast the whaleman that he has escaped from sudden

(12:56):
and apparently inevitable destruction oftener than his fellows. He is
accordingly valued on this account, without much reference to other qualities.
End of Section two