In the Heart of the Sea

survival. No matter how tempting it might be to spend at least one night on solid ground, Chase’s first inclination was to set sail for South America immediately: “I never for one moment lost sight of the main chance, which I conceived we still had, of either getting to the coast, or of meeting some vessel at sea.”
    When he returned to the beach he discovered that one of the men had some promising news. He had found a cleft in a rock that exuded the slightest trickle of water—just enough to wet his lips, but no more. Perhaps it was advisable to spend the night on the island and devote the next day to searching for water. Chase and his companions went out to the boats, and Chase told Pollard what he thought. They agreed to land.
    They dragged the boats up onto a grassy area beneath a stand of trees. “We then turned [the boats] bottom upwards,” Nickerson remembered, “thus forming a protection from the night dews.” The men fanned out along the shore, and after collecting a few crabs and fish, they settled down beneath the boats, ate their catch, then stretched out their bony limbs for the first time in a month. Sleep soon followed. “[F]ree from all the anxieties of watching and labor,” Chase wrote, “[we] gave ourselves up to an unreserved forgetfulness and peace of mind.”
    Morning came quickly and, with it, a return to the agonies of hunger and thirst. They were now so severely dehydrated that they had begun to lose the ability to speak. “Relief,” Chase wrote, “must come soon, or nature would sink.” They wandered the beach like ragged skeletons, pausing to lean against trees and rocks to catch their breath. They tried chewing the waxy green leaves of the shrubs that grew in the cliffs, but they were bitter to the taste. They found birds that made no attempt to escape when they plucked them from their nests. In the crevices of the rocks sprouted a grass that, when chewed, produced a temporary flow of moisture in their mouths. But nowhere did they find fresh water.
    As soon as they strayed beyond the beach, they discovered that the island was a scrap heap of fractured coral as sharp and piercing as shattered glass. Many of the men had no shoes, which made it impossible for them to explore any great distance from their encampment. They also feared that if they did venture out, they might not have the stamina to return before nightfall, thus exposing themselves “to attacks of wild beasts, which might inhabit the island.” That evening they returned, Nickerson wrote, “sorrowing and dejected to our little town of boats in the valley.”
    But Pollard had a surprise for them. The captain and his steward, William Bond, had spent the day gathering crabs and birds, and by the time the men returned from their searches, Pollard and Bond were in the midst of roasting what Nickerson called “a magnificent repast.” Prior to the sinking, food had been a source of dissension between Pollard and his men. Now it was what brought them together, and this time it was the master who was serving his crew. “Here everyone seated himself upon the beautiful green grass,” Nickerson remembered, “and perhaps no banquet was ever enjoyed with greater gusto or gave such universal satisfaction.”
    Pollard had done everything he could that day to increase the health and morale of his men. Chase remained focused on the “main chance”: getting to South America and safety. Restless and impatient as always, he had become convinced that they were wasting their time on this island without water. “In this state of affairs, we could not reconcile it to ourselves to remain longer at this place,” he wrote. “[A] day, an hour, lost to us unnecessarily here, might cost us our preservation.” That evening Chase expressed his concerns to Pollard: “I addressed the substance of these few reflections to the captain, who agreed with me in opinion, upon the necessity of taking some decisive steps in our present dilemma.”
    While he agreed with his first mate in principle, Pollard attempted to defuse some of Chase’s impetuousness. The captain pointed out that without a new supply of water, their chances of survival were next to nil. To push blindly ahead without exhausting every possibility of finding a spring would be a tragic mistake. “After some considerable conversation on this subject,” Chase wrote, “it was finally concluded to spend the succeeding day in the further search for water, and if none should