In the Heart of the Sea

Gallery and no figure head” (in Heffernan, p. 10). In a roster of Nantucket vessels that sailed in 1815, the Essex is listed as having left the island on July 13, with Daniel Russell as Master, George Pollard, Jr., as second mate, and Owen Chase as part of the crew; she returned on November 27, 1816, and sailed again on June 8, 1817 (NHA Collection 335, Folder 976). Her complete crew list for the 1817 voyage is in NHA Collection 15, Folder 57.
    In his invaluable Nantucket Scrap-Basket (which is greatly indebted to William H. Macy’s earlier There She Blows! ), William F. Macy provides this definition of a walk: “A raised platform on the roof of many old Nantucket houses, from which to look off to the sea. Never called ‘Widow’s Walk,’ ‘Captain’s Walk,’ or ‘Whale Walk,’ as often written nowadays [in 1916], but always just ‘the walk.’ Writers and others please note.” Obed Macy mentions the comet in his journal on July 7 and 14, 1819. The New Bedford Mercury speaks of the comet in its July 9 and July 23 editions. A part-owner of the Essex is mentioned in connection with the comet in a letter (dated July 16) from a contributor in Plymouth. “Mr. Walter Folger, of Nantucket, has been here this week, in attendance on the Court, as a witness, and has here continued his observations on the comet, which had been commenced at home. He brought with him a sextant and a small telescope.” The sea serpent is mentioned in the June 18 and August 6 editions of the Mercury. I talk about the development of Indian debt servitude on Nantucket in Abram’s Eyes (pp. 157-60). See also Daniel Vicker’s “The First Whalemen of Nantucket,” William and Mary Quarterly.
    For an account of Burke’s speech about the American whale fishery, see my “‘Every Wave Is a Fortune’: Nantucket Island and the Making of an American Icon” in New England Quarterly. William Comstock begins his description of a whaling voyage on a Nantucket whaler with a pointed discussion of the way in which islands foster a unique cultural attitude: “Islands are said to be nurseries of Genius, an assertion which would be wonderfully supported, if we could prove Greece and Rome to have once been two snug little detached parcels of land, situated in the midst of the Mediterranean Sea; and Germany a resurrection of the quiescent Atlanta. I am rather inclined to attribute this opinion to the overweening patriotism of our neighbor, John Bull, whose sea washed isle produced better things than all the rest of the world can afford; although, perhaps America can match him in thunder and lightning” ( Voyage to the Pacific, p. 3). Ralph Waldo Emerson was on Nantucket in 1847; he also records in his journal “A strong national feeling” (vol. X, p. 63) on the island.
    In his History, Obed Macy tells of the whaling prophecy and the appearance of Ichabod Paddock (p. 45), Hussey’s killing of the first sperm whale (p. 48), and the exhibition of a dead whale on the Nantucket waterfront in 1810 (p. 151). J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur described Nantucket as an oil-fertilized sandbank in Letters from an American Farmer (p. 142). For an account of the coming of Quakerism to Nantucket, see my Away Off Shore (pp. 78-87) and also Quaker Nantucket by Robert Leach and Peter Gow (pp. 13-30). Peleg Folger’s poem is quoted in Obed Macy’s History (pp. 279-81 ).
    Welcome Greene was the Quaker visitor to Nantucket in 1821 who made the disparaging remark about the state of the streets and observed the use of quarterboards as fences. Joseph Sansom wrote about the naming of the town’s streets (Crosby, p. 142). Walter Folger’s comparison of the community to a family is in Crosby (p. 97); Obed Macy’s remarks concerning the Nantucketers’ “consanguinity” is in his History (p. 66). For a more detailed description of downtown Nantucket, see my Away Off Shore (pp. 7-10); see also Edouard Stackpole’s Rambling Through the Streets and Lanes of Nantucket. According to an article in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror (February 14, 1931), a grand total of 134 sea captains have lived on Orange Street.
    In 1807 James Freeman remarked that “not more than one half of the males and two thirds of the females, who attend the Friends’ meetings, are members of the society” (Crosby, p. 132). Charles Murphey (the same man who was on the Dauphin when the Essex boat was discovered) wrote the poem about gazing upon the women during a Quaker meeting; it is in his