In the Heart of the Sea

the Essex, they were rapidly approaching their deadline for reaching the variables. But they were stuck in a calm, with hundreds of miles still to go to the south. If they were to have any hope of reaching the coast alive, their provisions would have to last them considerably longer than sixty days. Chase announced to his men that he was cutting their rations of hardtack in half, to only three ounces a day. He studied his crew carefully, looking for any signs of resistance. “No objections were made to this arrangement,” Chase reported. “[A]ll submitted, or seemed to do so, with an admirable fortitude and forbearance.”
    Even though their supply of water was in even greater danger of running out, Chase had no alternative but to maintain their daily ration at half a pint. “[Our] thirst had become now incessantly more intolerable than our hunger,” he wrote, “and the quantity then allowed was barely sufficient to keep the mouth in a state of moisture, for about one third of the time.”
    In 1906, W. J. McGee, Director of the St. Louis Public Museum, published one of the most detailed and graphic descriptions of the ravages of extreme dehydration ever recorded. McGee’s account was based on the experiences of Pablo Valencia, a forty-year-old sailor-turned-prospector, who survived almost seven days in the Arizona desert without water. The only liquid Valencia drank during his ordeal was the few drops of moisture he was able to extract from a scorpion and his own urine, which he collected each day in his canteen.
    The men of the Essex were driven to similar extremes. “In vain was every expedient tried to relieve the raging fever of the throat,” Chase recalled. They knew that drinking saltwater would only worsen their condition, but this did not stop some of them from attempting to hold small quantities of it in their mouths, hoping that they might absorb some of the moisture. It only increased their thirst. Like Valencia, they drank their urine. “Our suffering during these calm days,” Chase wrote, “almost exceeded human belief.”
    The Essex survivors had entered what McGee describes as the “cotton-mouth” phase of thirst. Saliva becomes thick and foul-tasting; the tongue clings irritatingly to the teeth and the roof of the mouth. Even though speech is difficult sufferers are often moved to complain ceaselessly about their thirst until their voices become so cracked and hoarse that they can speak no more. A lump seems to form in the throat, causing the sufferer to swallow repeatedly in a vain attempt to dislodge it. Severe pain is felt in the head and neck. The face feels full due to the shrinking of the skin. Hearing is affected, and many people begin to hallucinate.
    Still to come for the Essex crew were the agonies of a mouth that has ceased to generate saliva. The tongue hardens into what McGee describes as “a senseless weight, swinging on the still-soft root and striking foreignly against the teeth.” Speech becomes impossible, although sufferers are known to moan and bellow. Next is the “blood sweats” phase, involving “a progressive mummification of the initially living body.” The tongue swells to such proportions that it squeezes past the jaws. The eyelids crack and the eyeballs begin to weep tears of blood. The throat is so swollen that breathing becomes difficult, creating an incongruous yet terrifying sensation of drowning. Finally, as the power of the sun inexorably draws the remaining moisture from the body, there is “living death,” the state into which Pablo Valencia had entered when McGee discovered him on a desert trail, crawling on his hands and knees:
    [H]is lips had disappeared as if amputated, leaving low edges of blackened tissue; his teeth and gums projected like those of a skinned animal, but the flesh was black and dry as a hank of jerky; his nose was withered and shrunken to half its length, and the nostril-lining showing black; his eyes were set in a winkless stare, with surrounding skin so contracted as to expose the conjunctiva, itself black as the gums . . . ; his skin [had] generally turned a ghastly purplish yet ashen gray, with great livid blotches and streaks; his lower legs and feet, with forearms and hands, were torn and scratched by contact with thorns and sharp rocks, yet even the freshest cuts were so many scratches in dry leather, without trace of blood.
    Thanks to their daily half pint of water, the men of the Essex had not yet reached this