In the Heart of the Sea

Macy’s There She Blows! feels “that pride in my floating home springing up within me, which every seaman feels for his vessel” (p. 36). According to Ashley, a sailor’s mattress, filled with either corn husks or straw, was called a “Donkey’s Breakfast” (p. 54). On August 16, 1819 (four days after the Essex left Nantucket), Obed Macy recorded: “The grasshoppers have destroyed the greater part of the turnips”; he also mentions them in September. Information concerning the Chili comes from Starbuck (p. 432).

CHAPTER TWO: Knockdown
    The letter written by the Essex owners to Captain Daniel Russell is at the NHA. The marriage of George Pollard and Mary Riddell (June 17, 1819) is recorded in the Church Records of the South Congregational (now Unitarian) Church on Nantucket, as are the marriages of Owen Chase (the first mate of the Essex ) and Peggy Gardner (on April 28, 1819) and Matthew Joy (second mate) and Nancy Slade (August 7, 1817). Curiously, the minister was paid $2.00 for Joy’s marriage, $1.50 for Chase’s, and $1.25 for Pollard’s.
    For a description of the division of duties among a ship’s officers while weighing anchor, see Richard Henry Dana’s Seaman’s Friend (pp. 139-40). Information on Captain Pollard’s appearance comes from Joseph Warren Phinney’s “Nantucket, Far Away and Long Ago,” in Historic Nantucket (p. 29), with notes by his granddaughter Diana Taylor Brown, to whom I am grateful for providing me with a copy of Phinney’s original manuscript. Owen Chase’s appearance is based on information in the crew list of the Florida (his first ship after the Essex ): “five feet, ten inches tall, dark complexioned and brown haired” (Heffernan, p. 120). In the Nantucket Registry of Deeds Grantee Book 22 (p. 262), Owen Chase’s father, Judah, is listed as a “husbandman.” Owen Chase’s remarks concerning the number of voyages required to become a commander are from his narrative, as are all subsequent quotations attributed to him. While Chase claimed it took just two voyages to qualify to be a captain, the evidence suggests that four was the usual minimum number of voyages (Stuart Frank, personal communication, Oct. 25, 1999). Clifford Ashley, in The Yankee Whaler, describes the use of a whaler’s windlass (pp. 49-50), as does Falconer in his Marine Dictionary.
    Reuben Delano, in The Wanderings and Adventures of Reuben Delano, speaks of the dramatic sea change that occurred among the officers once a Nantucket whaleship left the island (p. 14). William Comstock defines “spit-fire” in The Life of Samuel Comstock (p. 71); he also tells of how Nantucketers stuck together aboard a whaleship (p. 37). William H. Macy describes the competition among the officers when it came to picking whaleboat crews (p. 39); he also speculates that Noah may have been the first captain to address his crew (p. 40). Pratt’s comments about blacks being relegated to the forecastle of a Nantucket whaleship is in his Journals (pp. 14-15). Richard Henry Dana tells of his preference for the forecastle in Two Years Before the Mast (p. 95). W. Jeffrey Bolster speaks of “yarning” and other activities in the forecastle in Black Jacks (pp. 88-89).
    William H. Macy describes the seasickness cure common among Nantucketers (p. 19). My thanks to Don Russell, a descendant of Essex captain Daniel Russell, who mentioned to me a family tradition concerning this same cure. According to Ashley, the lookouts positioned themselves inside hoops installed on the fore and main royal-masts chest-high above the crosstrees (p. 49). However, at this relatively early period in the fishery, there is no evidence of hoops having been installed on the masts of Nantucket whaleships. In Voyage to the Pacific, Comstock writes: “Two jack cross trees were made by the captain, and placed over the top gallant heads, one at the fore, the other at the main. One man was stationed on each, to look out for whales, and relieved every two hours. One of the boatsteerers was kept continually aloft with the man on the main top gallant cross trees, so that while one watched, the other covertly slept” (p. 20).
    My discussion of studding sails and the knockdown is based largely on John Harland’s invaluable Seamanship in the Age of Sail. According to Harland, the danger of dipping a studding-sail boom into the water even applied to a topgallant studding sail. Darcy Lever’s 1819 seamanship guide provides a detailed and illustrated