In the Heart of the Sea

During these long and uncertain passages, starvation inevitably took its toll. The biological anthropologist Stephen McGarvey has speculated that the people who survived these voyages tended to have a higher percentage of body fat before the voyage began and/or more efficient metabolisms, allowing them to live longer on less food than their thinner companions. (McGarvey theorizes that this is why modern-day Polynesians suffer from a high incidence of obesity.)
    The same factors that favored fat, metabolically efficient Polynesians were now at work among the crew of the Essex. Although they had all survived on the same rations during their month in the boats, this had not been the case prior to the sinking. As was customary aboard a whaleship, the food served in the forecastle (where the blacks lived) had been a grade below the miserable fare that had been served to the boatsteerers and young Nantucketers in steerage. The blacks were also, in all probability, in poorer health than the whites even before they sailed on the Essex. (The life expectancy of a black infant in 1900—the earliest date for which there are statistics—was only thirty-three years, more than fourteen years less than that of a white infant.) Now, thirty-eight days after the whale attack, it was plain to all that the African Americans, although not as weak as Joy, were faring more poorly than the rest of the crew.
    At the other extreme were the Nantucketers. Besides being better fed, they had an additional source of strength: they were all from the same close-knit community. The younger Nantucketers had been friends since childhood, while the officers, especially Captain Pollard, demonstrated a fatherly concern for the teenagers’ welfare. Whether enduring the torments of thirst and hunger on the boats or foraging for food on Henderson, the Nantucketers provided one another with support and encouragement that they did not offer the others.
    They had all seen how the man-of-war hawks robbed the tropic birds of their food. As conditions deteriorated on the boats, one could only wonder who of these nine Nantucketers, six African Americans, and five white off-islanders would become the hawks and who would become the tropic birds. Chappel, Wright, and Weeks decided that they did not want to find out.
    “The rest of us could make no objection to their plan,” Chase wrote, “as it lessened the load of our boats, [and] allowed us their share of the provisions.” Even the first mate had to admit that “the probability of their being able to sustain themselves on the island was much stronger than that of our reaching the mainland.” Pollard assured the three men that if he did make it back to South America, he would do everything in his power to see that they were rescued.
    With downcast eyes and trembling lips, the three men drew away from the rest of the crew. They’d already picked a spot, well removed from the original encampment, on which to construct a crude shelter out of tree branches. It was time they started work. But their seventeen shipmates were reluctant to see them go, offering “every little article that could be spared from the boats.” After accepting the gifts, Chappel and his two companions turned and started down the beach.

    THAT evening Pollard wrote what he assumed would be his last letter home. It was addressed to his wife, Mary, the twenty-year-old ropemaker’s daughter with whom he had spent the sum total of fifty-seven days of married life. He also wrote another, more public letter:
    Account of the loss of the Ship Essex of Nantucket in North America, Ducies Island, December 20, 1820, commanded by Capt. Pollard, jun. which shipwreck happened on the 20th day of November, 1820 on the equator in long. 120° W done by a large whale striking her in the bow, which caused her to fill with water in about 10 minutes. We got what provisions and water the boats would carry, and left her on the 22nd of November, and arrived here this day with all hands, except one black man, who left the ship at Ticamus. We intend to leave tomorrow, which will be the 26th of December [actually December 27], 1820, for the continent. I shall leave with this a letter for my wife, and whoever finds, and will have the goodness to forward it will oblige an unfortunate man, and receive his sincere wishes.
    George Pollard, Jun.
    To the west of their encampment, they had found a large tree with the name of a ship—the Elizabeth —carved into it. They