In the Heart of the Sea

of Nantucket’s shipowners. According to William Comstock, who penned an account of a whaling cruise from Nantucket in the 1820s, “Unfortunately, the anger which [the Quakers] are forbidden to express by outward actions, finding no vent, stagnates the heart, and, while they make professions of love and good will . . . , the rancor and intense malevolence of their feelings poisons every generous spring of human kindness.”
    Gideon Folger and Paul Macy, two major shareholders in the Essex, were prominent members of the island’s Quaker upper class. Yet, according to Nickerson, Macy, in charge of outfitting the Essex that summer of 1819, attempted to cut costs by severely underprovisioning the ship. In this practice he was not alone. “[T]he owners of whale-ships too frequently neglect to victual their ships properly,” Comstock wrote, “depending on the Captain to stint his crew in proportion to his means, by which a few dollars are saved to the rich owners, while the poor hard laboring sailor famishes with hunger.” While it would be unfair to point to Paul Macy as responsible, even in part, for the grief that eventually awaited the men of the Essex, the first step toward that future began with Macy’s decision to save a little money in beef and hardtack.
    On Nantucket in the early nineteenth century, people didn’t invest in bonds or the stock market, but rather in whaleships. By purchasing shares in several ships rather than putting their money in a single vessel, islanders spread both the risk and the reward throughout the community. Agents such as Macy and Folger could expect a total return on their whaling investments of somewhere between 28 and 44 percent per year.
    Making this level of profitability all the more remarkable was the state of the world’s economy in 1819. As Nantucket continued to add ship after ship to her fleet, mainland businesses were collapsing by the hundreds. Claiming that the “days of our fictitious affluence is past,” a Baltimore newspaper reported that spring on “dishonored credits, deserted dwellings, inactive streets, declining commerce, and exhausted coffers.” Nantucket remained an astonishing exception. Just as its isolated situation many miles out to sea enabled it to enjoy the warming influence of the Gulf Stream (providing for the longest growing season in the region), Nantucket existed, at least for the time being, in its own benign climate of prosperity.
    Between July 4 and July 23, ten whaleships left the island, most heading out in pairs. The wharves were busy with laborers long into the night, all caught up in the disciplined frenzy of preparing whale-ships for sea. But Gideon Folger, Paul Macy, and the Essex ’s captain, George Pollard, knew that all the preparations would be for naught if they couldn’t find a crew of twenty-one men.
    Since there were only so many Nantucketers to go around, shipowners relied on off-islanders with no previous sailing experience, known as “green hands,” to man their vessels. Many came from nearby Cape Cod. Shipping agents in cities up and down the East Coast also provided the owners with green hands, often sending them to Nantucket in groups aboard packet ships.
    A green hand’s first impression of the island was seldom positive. The young boys loitering on the waterfront inevitably harassed the new arrivals with the cry “See the greenies, come to go ileing.” (“Oil” was pronounced “ile” on Nantucket.) Then followed a walk from Straight Wharf to the base of Main Street, where a clothing and dry goods store served as the “grand resort and rendezvous of seafaring men.” Here men looking for a berth or just killing time (known as “watching the pass” on Nantucket) spent the day in a haze of tobacco smoke, lounging on an assortment of benches and wooden boxes.
    On this island of perpetual motion, job-seeking seamen were expected to whittle. It was the way a man whittled that let people know what kind of berth he expected. A whaleman with at least one voyage under his belt knew enough to draw his knife always away from him. This signaled that he was looking for a boatsteerer’s berth. Boatsteerers, on the other hand, whittled in the opposite direction, toward themselves; this indicated that they believed they were ready to become a mate. Not knowing the secret codes that Nantucketers had developed, a green hand simply whittled as best he knew how.
    Many of the green hands felt as if they had found