In the Heart of the Sea

types of leadership. He was clearly a dominant character capable of decisive initial leadership while possessing an incredible degree of perseverance” (p. 141). Frank Worsley makes the comments concerning Shackleton’s sensitivity to his men in Shackleton’s Boat Journey (pp. 169-70).
    In Biology of Starvation, Keys provides a summary of the physiological effects of starvation that includes a poor tolerance to cold temperatures and a darkening of the skin, particularly about the face (pp. 827-28). Brian Simpson, in Cannibalism and the Common Law, tells of the “belief that cannibalism, once practiced, easily becomes a habit” (p. 149). Guetzkow and Bowman speak of how semistarvation had “coarsened” the men in the Minnesota experiment (p. 32). David Harrison’s account of the sufferings aboard the Peggy appears in Donald Wharton’s In the Trough of the Sea (pp. 259-77); although the sailors claimed that the black slave was picked to be killed by lottery, Captain Harrison had “some strong suspicions that the poor Ethiopian was not altogether treated fairly; but on recollection, I almost wondered that they had given him even the appearance of an equal chance with themselves” (p. 269). Herbert Bloch describes “modern feral communities” in “The Personality of Inmates of Concentration Camps” (p. 335). Hilde Bluhm in “How Did They Survive?” refers to the inmate who spoke of “killing” his feelings (p. 8); Bluhm also quotes from the female prisoner who took on a “savage cunning” in order to survive in the death camps (p. 22). While living with the Ihalmiut in the Northwest Territory, Farley Mowatt learned the vital importance of fat to a people living on an all-meat diet. In People of the Deer he writes, “an eternal craving for fat is part of the price of living on an all-meat diet” (p. 85).
    The first recorded instance of drawing lots in a survival situation at sea was published in 1641; see Simpson’s Cannibalism and the Common Law (pp. 122-23). The description of David Flatt’s reaction to his death sentence aboard the Peggy is told by Harrison (Wharton, pp. 271-76). See also H. Bluestone and C. L. McGahee’s “Reaction to Extreme Stress: Impending Death by Execution.” My thanks to Friends Robert Leach and Michael Royston for their insights regarding Quakerism’s stand on gambling and killing (personal communication, June 3, 1998). Leach also provided me with information regarding the Quaker background of George Pollard (personal communication, May 22, 1998). R. B. Forbes, in the pamphlet Loss of the Essex, Destroyed by a Whale, refers to how the men aboard the Polly fished for sharks with people’s body parts (pp. 13-14). My account of the drawing of lots and execution of Owen Coffin is based not only on testimonies from Pollard (as recorded by George Bennet, in Heffernan [p. 215]), Chase, and Nickerson but also on a letter Nickerson wrote to Leon Lewis dated October 27, 1876 (at the NHA). In the letter Nickerson claims that Pollard was Coffin’s executioner, which contradicts his own account in the narrative, where he says that it was Ramsdell who shot Coffin. Since other accounts claim it was Ramsdell, I have assumed that Nickerson was mistaken in the letter.

CHAPTER TWELVE: In the Eagle’s Shadow
    John Leach speaks of the active-passive approach to a long-term survival situation in Survival Psychology (p. 167). Eleanor Whitney et al., in Understanding Normal and Clinical Nutrition, describe the effects of an extreme magnesium deficiency: “convulsions, bizarre muscle movements (especially of the eye and facial muscles), hallucinations, and difficulty in swallowing” (p. 302). Captain Harrison’s account of the sailor who died insane after eating the raw liver of a black slave is in Donald Wharton’s In the Trough of the Sea (p. 269). A version of this story apparently made its way into the lore surrounding the Essex ordeal. In his pamphlet Loss of the Essex, R. B. Forbes, who depended greatly on information provided by the often unreliable Frederick Sanford, claimed that “when a black man died in one of the boats, another one partook of his liver, became mad, and jumped overboard” (p. 11).
    The meaning of “Barzillai” comes from Alfred Jones’s “A List of Proper Names in the Old and New Testaments” in Cruden’s Complete Concordance (p. 791). Warren Kinston and Rachel Rosser write of the psychological effects of suffering high losses in battle in