In the Heart of the Sea

and carelessness, scarcely to be looked for amid persons in our forlorn and hopeless situation.”
    Only one thing lay between them and “a momentary forgetfulness of our actual situation”—a ferocious, unbearable thirst. Chase reported that even after consuming the tortoise and its blood, they still yearned for a long, cool drink of water: “[H]ad it not been for the pains which that gave us, we should have tasted, during this spell of fine weather, a species of enjoyment.”
    On Sunday, December 3, they ate the last of their damaged bread. For the men in Chase’s boat, it was a turning point. At first they didn’t notice the change, but with each succeeding day of eating unspoiled hardtack, “the moisture began to collect in our mouths and the parching fever of the palate imperceptibly left it.” They were still seriously dehydrated, and becoming only more so, but no longer were they introducing excessive amounts of salt into their bodies.
    That evening, after the men in Chase’s boat had conducted what Nickerson called “our usual prayer meeting,” clouds moved in, cutting them off from the starlight. At around ten o’clock, Chase and Pollard lost track of Joy’s boat. Its disappearance was so sudden that Nickerson feared “something had destroyed them.” Almost immediately, Chase hove to and raised a lantern to the masthead as the rest of his crew scanned the darkness for some sign of the second mate’s boat. About a quarter of a mile to leeward, they spotted a small light flickering in the gloom. It proved to be Joy’s answering signal. All three boats were once again accounted for.
    Two nights later, it was Chase’s turn to become separated from the others. Instead of lighting a lantern, the first mate fired his pistol. Soon after, Pollard and Joy appeared out of the darkness to windward. That night the officers agreed that if they should ever become separated again, no action would be taken to reassemble the convoy. Too much time was being lost trying to keep the boats together. Besides, if one of the boats either capsized or became unrepairable, there was little the other crews could do. All three boats were already overloaded, and to add any more men would result in the eventual deaths of all of them. The prospect of beating away the helpless crew of another boat with their oars was awful to contemplate, even if they all realized that each boat should go it alone.
    However, so strong was what Chase called “the extraordinary interest which we felt in each other’s company” that none of them would consider voluntarily separating. This “desperate instinct” persisted to such a point that, even in the midst of conditions that made simply staying afloat a full-time occupation, they “continued to cling to each other with a strong and involuntary impulse.”
    On December 8, the seventeenth day, the wind increased to a full gale. Forty- to fifty-knot gusts lashed the men with rain. It was the most wind they’d experienced so far, and after gradually shortening sail all night, each boat-crew found it necessary to lower its masts. The waves were huge, the giant crests atomized into foam by the shrieking wind. Despite the horrendous conditions, the men attempted to collect rainwater in the folds of their sails. They soon discovered that the sailcloth was even more permeated with salt than their damaged provisions had been, and the water proved as salty as seawater.
    The boats became unmanageable in the immense waves. “The sea rose to a fearful height,” Chase remembered, “and every wave that came looked as if it must be the last that would be necessary for our destruction.” There was nothing for the men to do but lie down in the bottoms of their fragile vessels and “await the approaching issue with firmness and resignation.”
    Gale-force winds in the open ocean can create waves of up to forty feet. But the mountainous size of the waves actually worked to the men’s advantage. The whaleboats flicked over the crests, then wallowed in the troughs, temporarily protected from the wind. The vertical walls of water looming on either side were a terrifying sight, but not once did a wave crash down and swamp a boat.
    The intense darkness of the night was, according to Nickerson, “past conception to those who have not witnessed the same.” Making the blackness all the more horrible were flashes of lightning that seemed to envelop the boats in crackling sheets of fire.
    By noon of the