In the Heart of the Sea

impose his own will. For better or worse, the men of the Essex were sailing toward a destiny that would be determined, in large part, not by their unassertive captain but by their forceful and fishy mate.
     
    NOW that they had devised a plan, it was time to split up the crew among the three whaleboats. Since Chase’s boat was in the worst shape, his crew remained at just six, while the other boats were obliged to carry seven men each.
    At the beginning of the voyage, the officers’ prime consideration when choosing a man for a boat-crew had been whether or not he was a Nantucketer. In the aftermath of a disaster, ties of family and friendship are, if anything, even more strongly felt, and it is apparent that the Nantucketers’ clannishness, now intensified, strongly influenced the makeup of the three crews. So did rank. Of the twenty crew members, nine were Nantucketers, five were white off-islanders, and six were African Americans. As captain, Pollard was given the most Nantucketers—five out of the seven men in his boat. Chase managed to get two, along with two white Cape Codders and a black. Second mate Matthew Joy, however, the Essex ’s most junior officer, found himself without a single Nantucketer; instead he was given four of the six blacks.
    Feeling personally responsible for the welfare of the young Nantucketers aboard the Essex, Pollard made sure that his boat contained his eighteen-year-old cousin, Owen Coffin, and Coffin’s two boyhood friends, Charles Ramsdell and Barzillai Ray. Thomas Nickerson’s position as Chase’s after oarsman meant that he was not included in this group but must manage as best he could on the leakiest of the three boats. From a Nantucketer’s perspective, however, Chase’s boat was preferable to Joy’s.
    Although originally from Nantucket, Joy’s family had moved to the recently established whaling port of Hudson, New York. Chase reported that Joy had been suffering from an undiagnosed illness, possibly tuberculosis, well before the sinking. Seriously ill and not a full-fledged Nantucketer, Joy was given only coofs. If the success of a group in a survival situation is dependent on strong, active leadership, Joy’s six crew members were put at an immediate disadvantage. The Nantucketers had done their best to take care of their own.
    All twenty men were nominally under the command of Captain Pollard, but each boat-crew remained an autonomous entity that might at any moment become separated from the others. Each boat was given two hundred pounds of hardtack, sixty-five gallons of water, and two Galapagos tortoises. To ensure that discipline would be maintained even under the most arduous circumstances, Pollard gave each mate a pistol and some powder, keeping a musket for himself.
    At 12:30—less than a half hour after the officers had convened their council—they set out in a strong breeze, their schooner-rigged whaleboats, according to Nickerson, “a very handsome show on this our first start.” The men’s spirits were the lowest they’d ever been. With the Essex receding rapidly behind them, they were beginning to appreciate what Nickerson called “the slender thread upon which our lives were hung.”
    All were affected by leaving their ship for the last time. Even the stoic Chase could not help but wonder at how “we looked upon our shattered and sunken vessel with such an excessive fondness and regret. . . . [I]t seemed as if abandoning her we had parted with all hope.” The men exchanged frightened glances, even as they continued to search out the disappearing wreck, “as though,” Nickerson said, “it were possible that she could relieve us from the fate that seemed to await us.”
    By four o’clock that afternoon, they had lost sight of the Essex. Almost immediately, the men’s morale began to improve. Nickerson sensed that, no longer haunted by the vision of the disabled ship, “[we had been] relieved from a spell by which we had been bound.” He went so far as to claim that “now that our minds were made up for the worst, half the struggle was over.” With no turning back, they had only one recourse—to hold to their plan.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    At Sea

    A S DARKNESS APPROACHED at the end of the first day, the wind built steadily, kicking up a steep, irregular chop. The Essex whaleboats were hybrids—built for rowing but now adapted to sail—and the men were still learning how they handled. Instead of a rudder, each boat was equipped with a