In the Heart of the Sea

of the harbor (p. 61); see also William C. Macy’s excellent account of the fire in Part III of Obed Macy’s History of Nantucket (pp. 287-89). Concerning the Oak, Nantucket’s last whaling vessel, Alexander Starbuck writes: “Sold at Panama, 1872; sent home 60 bbls sperm, 450 bbls. [right] whale. Nantucket’s last whaler” (p. 483).
    The statistics concerning the number of sperm whales killed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are from Dale Rice’s “Sperm Whale” (p. 191); see also Davis et al.’s In Pursuit of Leviathan (p. 135) and Hal Whitehead’s “The Behavior of Mature Male Sperm Whales on the Galapagos Islands Breeding Grounds” (p. 696). Charles Wilkes (the same man who, as a midshipman, talked with George Pollard) recorded the observation that sperm whales had “become wilder” in vol. 5 of Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition (p. 493). Alexander Starbuck collected accounts of whale attacks on ships in History of the American Whale Fishery (pp. 114-25). Captain DeBlois’s description of his encounter with the whale that sank the Ann Alexander is in Clement Sawtell’s The Ship Ann Alexander of New Bedford, 1805-1851 (pp. 61- 84). Melville speaks of the “ Ann Alexander whale” in a letter dated November 7, 1851, to Evert Duyckinck in his Correspondence (pp. 139-40).
    In a letter dated November 15, 1868, to Winnifred Battie, Phebe Chase tells of seeing Owen Chase: “[H]e called me cousin Susan (taking me for sister Worth) held my hand and sobbed like a child, saying O my head, my head[.] [I]t was pitiful to see the strong man bowed, then his personal appearance so changed, didn’t allow himself decent clothing, fears he shall come to want” (NHA Collection 105, Folder 15). For information concerning Nickerson, see Edouard Stackpole’s foreword to the NHA edition of Nickerson’s narrative (pp. 8-11). My thanks to Aimee Newell, Curator of Collections at the NHA, for providing me with information about Benjamin Lawrence’s circle of twine and the Essex chest. See “A Relic of the Whaleship Essex ” in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror (August 22, 1986) and “A Valuable Relic Preserved” in the Garrettsville Journal (September 3, 1896).

EPILOGUE: Bones
    Information on the sperm whale that washed up on Nantucket at the end of 1997 comes from the following sources: articles by Dionis Gauvin and Chris Warner in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror (January 8, 1998); articles by J. C. Gamble in the Nantucket Beacon (January 6, 1998); “The Story of Nantucket’s Sperm Whale” by Cecil Barron Jensen in Historic Nantucket (Summer 1998, pp. 5-8); and interviews conducted in May and June of 1999 with Edie Ray, Tracy Plaut, Tracy Sundell, Jeremy Slavitz, Rick Morcom, and Dr. Karlene Ketten. Dr. Wesley Tiffney, Director of the University of Massachusetts-Boston Field Station, spoke with me about erosion at Codfish Park (personal communication, June 1999).
    The whale necropsy was supervised by Connie Marigo and Howard Krum of the New England Aquarium. The cutting up of the whale was directed by Tom French of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. Working with French were David Taylor, a science teacher at Triton Regional High School in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and three of Taylor’s students. It was fitting that Taylor and his students were from Newburyport, which was where many of Nantucket’s first settlers had come from in the seventeenth century. The Nantucket Historical Association was officially granted the whale skeleton by the National Marine Fisheries Service in the winter of 1998.
    According to Clay Lancaster’s Holiday Island, Thomas Nickerson operated a guest house on North Water Street in the mid-1870s (when he met the writer Leon Lewis), but had relocated to North Street (now Cliff Road) by 1882 (p. 55). An advertisement in the Inquirer and Mirror (June 26, 1875) announces Nickerson’s having opened “a family boardinghouse [with] several large airy and commodious rooms, with all the comforts of a home.” My thanks to Elizabeth Oldham for bringing this ad to my attention.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
    Altman, I., and W. Haythorn. “The Ecology of Isolated Groups.” Behavioural Science 12 (1967), pp. 169-82.
    Andrews, Deborah C. “Attacks of Whales on Ships: A Checklist.” Melville Society Extracts (May 1974), pp. 3-17.
    Ansel, Willits D. The Whaleboat: A Study of Design, Construction and Use from 1850-1970. Mystic, Conn.: Mystic Seaport