In the Heart of the Sea

reptile’s snakelike head. The blood spurting from the neck was a startlingly cool 62 degrees in the 110-degree sun. After drinking his fill, Lawrence left the dead tortoise on the beach and resumed his search for the ship. He found it at dusk, but dreading what Nickerson termed “the laugh which would be turned upon him if he returned to the boat empty handed,” he headed back into the island’s interior in search of a tortoise. It was thoroughly dark by the time Lawrence, tortoise-laden, staggered down to the beach and was greeted by the men who had been sent out to search for him.
    In the next four days the crew collected 180 tortoises on Hood. Then the Essex headed for nearby Charles Island. The short cruise gave Nickerson the opportunity to observe the creatures, which were for the most part stacked like boulders in the hold, although some of them were left to wander the ship’s deck. One of the reasons Galapagos tortoises were so valued by the whalemen was that they could live for more than a year without any food or water. Not only was the tortoise’s meat still plump and tasty after that long period, but it also yielded as much as eight to ten pounds of fat, which Nickerson described as “clear and pure as the best of yellow butter and of a rich flavor.”
    Some sailors insisted that the tortoises felt no pangs of hunger during their time on a whaleship, but Nickerson was not so sure. As the voyage progressed he noticed that they were constantly licking everything they encountered on the ship’s deck. The tortoises’ gradual starvation ended only when they were slaughtered for food.
    On Charles Island the whalemen had created a crude post office—a simple box or cask sheltered by a giant tortoise shell, in which mail could be left for transportation back to Nantucket. While on Charles during the War of 1812, Captain David Porter had used to his tactical advantage information gleaned from letters left by British whaling captains. For the men of the Essex, the Charles Island mail drop offered an opportunity to reply to the letters they had received via the Aurora. They also collected another hundred tortoises. Nickerson claimed that these tortoises, which proved disappointingly scarce, were the sweetest-tasting of the Galapagos.
    It was on Charles Island that they procured a six-hundred-pound monster of a tortoise. It took six men to carry it to the beach on crossed poles. No one knew how old a tortoise of this size might be, but on nearby Albemarle Island there was “Port Royal Tom,” a giant tortoise whose shell had been carved with countless names and dates, the oldest going back to 1791. (Tom was reported still to be alive as late as 1881.)
    Nickerson, who exhibited a Darwinesque interest in the natural world, made careful note of the many other creatures inhabiting Charles Island, including green tortoises, pelicans, and two kinds of iguanas. During his last day on the island, however, Nickerson was shaken by an event more in keeping with Melville’s vision of the Galapagos than with Darwin’s.
    On the morning of October 22, Thomas Chappel, a boatsteerer from Plymouth, England, decided to play a prank. Not telling anyone else on the Essex what he was up to, the mischievous Chappel (who was, according to Nickerson, “fond of fun at whatever expense”) brought a tinderbox ashore with him. As the others searched the island for tortoises, Chappel secretly set a fire in the underbrush. It was the height of the dry season, and the fire soon burned out of control, surrounding the tortoise hunters and cutting off their route back to the ship. With no other alternative, they were forced to run through a gauntlet of flame. Although they singed their clothes and hair, no serious injuries resulted—at least not to the men of the Essex.
    By the time they returned to the ship, almost the entire island was ablaze. The men were indignant that one of their own had committed such a stupid and careless act. But it was Pollard who was the most upset. “[T]he Captain’s wrath knew no bounds,” Nickerson remembered, “swearing vengeance upon the head of the incendiary should he be discovered.” Fearing a certain whipping, Chappel did not reveal his role in the conflagration until much later. Nickerson believed that the fire killed thousands upon thousands of tortoises, birds, lizards, and snakes.
    The Essex had left a lasting impression on the island. When Nickerson returned to Charles years later, it was