In the Heart of the Sea

completely unloaded by lighters—a time-consuming and expensive process. In 1842, Peter Folger Ewer designed and built two 135-foot “camels”—giant wooden water wings that formed a floating dry dock capable of carrying a fully loaded whaleship across the Bar. The fact remained, however, that New Bedford’s deep-water harbor gave the port an unassailable advantage, as did its nearness to the newly emerging railroad system, on which increasing numbers of merchants shipped their oil to market.
    But Nantucketers also had themselves to blame for the dramatic downturn the whaling business would take on the island in the 1840s. As whalemen from New Bedford, New London, and Sag Harbor opened up new whaling grounds in the North Pacific, Nantucketers stuck stubbornly to the long-since depleted grounds that had served them so well in past decades.
    There were also problems at home. Quakerism, once the driving cultural and spiritual force of the community, fractured into several squabbling sects. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, there were more meetinghouses than ever on the island, yet the total number of Quakers on Nantucket dwindled with each passing year. As the strictures of Quakerism relaxed, Nantucketers were free to display the wealth they had once felt obliged to conceal. Main Street became lined with elegant brick estates and giant clapboard Greek Revival mansions—monuments to the riches islanders had, in the words of Herman Melville, “harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea.” Even though the annual return of oil had been steadily diminishing for a number of years, there was little visible reason for concern on the streets of Nantucket in the early summer of 1846. Then, at eleven o’clock on a hot July night, someone shouted the dreaded word “Fire!”
    It had been one of the driest summers on record. The wooden buildings were as parched as tinder. In a few short minutes, the flames had spread from a hat factory on Main Street to an adjoining structure. At this time Nantucket was without a municipal fire department, relying instead on privately organized fire companies. As the fire made its way up Main Street with alarming rapidity, individual homeowners started bidding for the fire companies’ services so as to protect their own houses. Instead of working together as a coordinated unit, the companies split off in different directions, allowing the blaze to build into an uncontrollable conflagration.
    The immense upward flow of heat created wind currents that rushed through the narrow streets, spreading the fire in all directions. Chunks of burning debris flew into the air and landed on houses that had been assumed safe. In an attempt to contain the blaze, the town’s fire wardens dynamited houses, the explosions adding to the terrifying confusion of the night. Owen Chase’s Orange Street home was far enough south to escape the fire, but Pollard’s house on Centre Street was directly in its path. Miraculously, the tornado-like convection currents turned the fire east, toward the harbor, before it reached the night watchman’s house. Pollard’s residence survived, even though all the houses on the east side of the street were destroyed.
    Soon the fire reached the waterfront. Oil warehouses billowed with black smoke, then erupted into flame. As the casks burst, a river of liquid fire poured across the wharves and into the harbor. One fire company had run its engine into the shallows of the anchorage and was pumping seawater onto the wharves. The men belatedly realized that a creeping slick of oil had surrounded them in fire. Their only option was to dive underwater and swim for their lives. Their wooden fire engine was destroyed, but all the men made it to safety.
    By the next morning, more than a third of the town—and almost all the commercial district—was a charred wasteland. But it was the waterfront that had suffered the most. The sperm oil had burned so fiercely that not even cinders remained. The leviathan, it was said, had finally achieved his revenge.
    The town was quickly rebuilt, this time largely in brick. Nantucketers attempted to reassure themselves that the disturbing dip in the whaling business was only temporary. Then, just two years later, in 1848, came the discovery of gold in California. Hundreds of Nantucketers surrendered to the lure of easy wealth in the West. Abandoning careers as whalemen, they shipped out as passengers bound for San Francisco, packed