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    The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex: The History of the Shipwreck That Inspired Moby Dick
    The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex: The History of the Shipwreck That Inspired Moby Dick
    The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex: The History of the Shipwreck That Inspired Moby Dick
    Ebook63 pages1 hour

    The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex: The History of the Shipwreck That Inspired Moby Dick

    By Howard Brinkley

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    About this ebook

    In 1820, a sperm whale attacked and sunk the Whaleship Essex. 2000 miles off the coast of South America, the crew knew it would be a true feat to survive and make it to shore--any shore.

    It’s story became legendary; Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about it; Edgar Allen Poe incorporated details of it in his only novel; and, most notoriously of them all, it served as the inspiration for Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

    This account retraces the history of one of the most famous shipwrecks of all time.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookCaps
    Release dateJan 6, 2014
    ISBN9781311012944
    The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex: The History of the Shipwreck That Inspired Moby Dick

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      Book preview

      The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex - Howard Brinkley

      LifeCaps Presents:

      The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex

      The History of the Shipwreck That Inspired Moby Dick

      By Howard Brinkley

      © 2011 by Golgotha Press, Inc./HistoryCaps

      Published at SmashWords

      www.bookcaps.com

      About LifeCaps

      LifeCaps is an imprint of BookCaps™ Study Guides. With each book, a lesser known or sometimes forgotten life is recapped. We publish a wide array of topics (from baseball and music to literature and philosophy), so check our growing catalogue regularly (www.bookcaps.com) to see our newest books.

      Introduction

      In the early 19th century, as most of the rest of the nation and even the world slipped into an economic decline, the island of Nantucket became one of the wealthiest communities in the United States. This was all thanks to the ongoing boom in the whaling business. A patch of sandy hills no larger than a few square miles, the island of Nantucket was home to a people and a culture of its own, which moved to the rhythms of the ocean and lived to hunt the majestic whales.

      When whaling first began on Nantucket, the hunters could launch small whaleboats from shore and pick off passing right whales, hauling the enormous mammals onto the beach for processing. But soon these pods were played out, and whalers were forced to build larger boats and venture farther out into the deep Atlantic. It was well away from the mainland where intrepid sailors first spotted the sperm whale, which with its more pure and easily accessible spermaceti oil would soon become the whalers’ prime target.

      In the space of a few years, Nantucket whaleships were plying the waters from the Horn of Africa all the way to the Arctic Ocean. The Pacific and Indian oceans were the obvious next step. The opening of all the world’s oceans to the whale trade meant significantly longer voyages—sometimes up to three years, as opposed to 9 months for a whaleship confined to the Atlantic.

      Mary Coffin and Nathaniel Starbuck were the first English couple to marry on Nantucket Island, which had previously been the home to the Wampanoag tribe of Native Americans. The Starbucks became the first great family on the island and were also among its first whalers. For several years, Mary Coffin Starbuck had forbidden a church to be built. She had her own reasons for keeping spiritual matters on the mainland. But then, the charming John Richardson persuaded her to convert to Quakerism. A pacifist sect of Christianity, Quakers were considered serious, spiritual and well organized. On Nantucket Island, and especially within the whaling industry, Quaker industriousness combined with the blood lust of hunting enormous whales to create a unique perspective on the world.

      The Starbucks, along with their Macy and Coffin cousins, founded a whaling empire that grew ever more powerful as the nineteenth century progressed. The natural thriftiness of the Quakers, plus some smart investment moves, helped the island to prosper even when the rest of the industry faced hard times and bankruptcies. The collapse of whaling on Long Island and the mainland meant only more opportunities for the Nantucket fleets, opportunities that ambitious captains and ship owners were happy to grasp.

      By necessity, women were the decision makers and power brokers on Nantucket Island. Men were only on hand long enough to prepare for the next voyage. It helped that part of the Quaker philosophy was a forward-thinking perspective on gender roles, holding that women were as capable of leadership and good decision making as their spouses.

      Chapter 1: Ship and Crew History

      In July 1819, just weeks before the beginning of its doomed voyage, the Essex was one of more than 70 whaleships whose port of origin was Nantucket. Since the first exploration of the Pacific fisheries, these ships were now flung all across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic and all points in between. With twenty years in service, the Essex was an old ship by anyone’s standard. Most oceangoing vessels at the time, being made primarily of wood, did not last more than 15 years. It was also small for a whaleship: 87 feet long and displacing 238 tons. Still, the Essex had luck on its side. Whaling was always a dangerous business, but so far, the ship had proven both profitable and relatively safe.

      The Essex had three masts and a bowsprit, or a short spar extending from the bow of the ship at a 45 degree angle. Horizontal beams called yards extended out from each of the main masts, from which the ship’s many sails were hung. Organizing all of these sheets of canvas was a bewildering array of ropes, pulleys and levers. For inexperienced sailors,

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