In the Heart of the Sea

hunger for labor. “[A]n African is treated like a brute by the officers of their ship,” reported William Comstock, who had much to say about the evils of Nantucket’s Quaker shipowners. “Should these pages fall into the hands of any of my colored brethren, let me advise them to fly Nantucket as they would the Norway Maelstrom.” Even Nickerson admitted that Nantucket whaling captains had a reputation as “Negro drivers.” Significantly, Nantucketers referred to the packet that delivered green hands from New York City as the “Slaver.”
     
    BY THE evening of Wednesday, August 11, all save for Captain Pollard were safely aboard the Essex. Anchored beside her, just off the Nantucket Bar, was another whaleship, the Chili. Commanded by Absalom Coffin, the Chili was also to leave the following day. It was an opportunity for what whalemen referred to as a “gam”—a visit between two ships’ crews. Without the captains to inhibit the revelry (and with the Bar between them and town), they may have seized this chance for a final, uproarious fling before the grinding discipline of shipboard life took control of their lives.
    At some point that evening, Thomas Nickerson made his way down to his bunk and its mattress full of mildewed corn husks. As he faded off to sleep on the gently rocking ship, he surely felt what one young whaleman described as a great, almost overwhelming “pride in my floating home.”
    That night he was probably unaware of the latest bit of gossip circulating through town—of the strange goings-on out on the Commons. Swarms of grasshoppers had begun to appear in the turnip fields. “[T]he whole face of the earth has been spotted with them . . . ,” Obed Macy would write. “[N]o person living ever knew them so numerous.” A comet in July and now a plague of locusts?
    As it turned out, things would end up badly for the two ships anchored off the Nantucket Bar on the evening of August 11, 1819. The Chili would not return for another three and a half years, and then with only five hundred barrels of sperm oil, about a quarter of what was needed to fill a ship her size. For Captain Coffin and his men, it would be a disastrous voyage.
    But nothing could compare to what fate had in store for the twenty-one men of the Essex.

CHAPTER TWO
    Knockdown

    O N THE MORNING of Thursday, August 12, 1819, a harbor vessel delivered Captain George Pollard, Jr., to the Essex. At twenty-eight, Pollard was a young, but not spectacularly young, first-time captain. Over the last four years he had spent all but seven months aboard the Essex, as second mate and then first mate. Except for her former captain, Daniel Russell, no one knew this ship better than George Pollard.
    Pollard carried a letter from the Essex ’s principal owners telling the new captain, in spare, direct prose, exactly what was expected of him. His predecessor, Daniel Russell, had received a similar letter prior to an earlier voyage. It had read:
    Respected Friend,
    As thou art master of the Ship Essex now lying without the bar at anchor, our orders are, that thou shouldst proceed to sea the first fair wind and proceed for the Pacifick Ocean, and endeavour to obtain a load of Sperm Oil and when accomplished to make the best dispatch for this place. Thou art forbidden to hold any illicit trade. Thou art forbidden to carry on thyself or to suffer any person belonging to the ship Essex to carry on any trade except it should be necessary for the preservation of the ship Essex or her crew: wishing thee a short and prosperous voyage, with a full portion of happiness we remain thy friends.
    In behalf of the owners of the ship Essex,
    Gideon Folger, Paul Macy
    Pollard felt the full weight of the owners’ expectations. He was thinking not only about the voyage ahead but also about what he was leaving behind. Just two months before, he and nineteen-year-old Mary Riddell had been married in the Second Congregational Church, of which Mary’s father, a well-to-do merchant and ropemaker was a deacon.
    As he scrambled up the Essex ’s side, then made his way aft to the quarterdeck, Captain Pollard knew that the entire town was watching him and his men. All summer, ships had been leaving the island, sometimes as many as four or five a week, but with the departure of the Essex and the Chili, there would be a lull of about a month or so before another whaleship would depart. For the entertainment-starved inhabitants of Nantucket, this would be it for a