In the Heart of the Sea

was wrong. Given what had happened to the Essex only a week before, the reply seemed like a sick joke.
    Pollard told them that his boat had been attacked by a whale.
    Instead of a sperm whale, it had been a smaller, but more aggressive, killer whale. These eight- to twelve-ton toothed whales feed on warm-blooded animals such as dolphins and seals. They hunt in packs and have even been known to attack and kill sperm whales. There have been documented cases in which killer whales, also known as orcas, have repeatedly rammed and sunk wooden sailing yachts.
    Pollard explained that, entirely unprovoked, the whale had slammed its head against their boat and taken a sizable bite out of it. Then it proceeded to “play about” the boat, batting it around with its head and tail as a cat might toy with a mouse, before it finally attacked once again, this time splitting the boat’s stem. As the whale churned up the water around them, the men grabbed the two poles that held up the tips of the sails (known as sprit poles) and repeatedly punched the creature’s sides. Chase arrived just as Pollard and his men succeeded in beating back the whale and sending it swimming away.
    Pollard’s boat had begun to swamp, so he ordered his crew to transfer their provisions to the other boats. All night the three boats lay huddled together in the swells. Unable to see very far in the inky darkness, the men let their imaginations fill the void with their fears. Over the last week they had contended with stiff headwinds, spoiled provisions, and leaky boats. To be attacked by yet another whale was the crowning blow: “[I]t seemed to us as if fate was wholly relentless, in pursuing us with such a cruel complication of disasters.” They searched the water’s black surface, convinced that the whale would reappear. “We were not without our fears that the fish might renew his attack, some time during the night, upon one of the other boats, and unexpectedly destroy us.” Without their ship to protect them, the hunters had become the prey.
     
    THE next morning they accomplished a quick repair of Pollard’s boat by nailing thin strips of wood along the interior of the broken section. Once again, they were on their way, this time in a strong southeasterly breeze. That day the men in Chase’s boat began to experience overpowering sensations of thirst—a lust for water that made it impossible to think about anything else. Despite the dryness of their mouths, they talked compulsively about their cravings. Only gradually did they realize the cause of their distress.
    The day before, they had started eating the saltwater-damaged bread. The bread, which they had carefully dried in the sun, now contained all the salt of seawater but not, of course, the water. Already severely dehydrated, the men were, in effect, pouring gasoline on the fire of their thirsts—forcing their kidneys to extract additional fluid from their bodies to excrete the salt. They were beginning to suffer from a condition known as hypernatremia, in which an excessive amount of sodium can bring on convulsions.
    “The privation of water is justly ranked among the most dreadful of the miseries of our life,” Chase recorded. “[T]he violence of raving thirst has no parallel in the catalogue of human calamities.” Chase claimed that it was on this day, November 28—the sixth since leaving the wreck—that “our extreme sufferings here first commenced.”
    Even after they realized that the bread was responsible for their agony, the men in the first mate’s boat resolved to continue eating the damaged provisions. The bread would spoil if it wasn’t eaten soon, and their plan was contingent on a full sixty days of provisions. “Our determination was, to suffer as long as human patience and endurance would hold out,” Chase wrote, “having only in view, the relief that would be afforded us, when the quantity of wet provisions should be exhausted.”
    The next day it became clear that the strain of sailing in the open ocean, day and night, for more than a week had taken its toll on the boats. The seams were gradually pulling apart, and all three craft now had to be bailed constantly. On board Chase’s boat the situation was the most dire, but the first mate refused to give in. With his hammer in hand, he attended to even the most trivial repair. “[B]eing an active and ingenious man,” Nickerson recalled, the first mate let “no opportunity pass whereby he [could] add a