In the Heart of the Sea

Keys (for whom the K-ration was named). The volunteers lived a spare but comfortable existence at a stadium on the campus of the University of Minnesota. Although meager, their carefully measured rations of potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, dark bread, and macaroni (similar to the kinds of foods refugees might scavenge during wartime) possessed a wide variety of vitamins and minerals. Yet, despite the clinically safe circumstances of the experiment, the volunteers suffered severe physiological and psychological distress.
    As they lost weight, the men became lethargic in both body and spirit. They became increasingly irritable. Concentration became difficult. They were appalled at their lack of physical strength and coordination, and many suffered blackouts when they stood up quickly. Their limbs swelled. They lost their sexual desire and would indulge instead in a kind of “stomach masturbation,” describing favorite meals to one another and poring over cookbooks for hours at a time. They complained of losing all sense of initiative and creativity. “Many of the socalled American characteristics,” a chronicler of the experiment wrote, “—abounding energy, generosity, optimism—become intelligible as the expected behavior response of a well-fed people.”
    For many of the men, the most difficult part of the experiment was the recovery period. Weeks after increasing their food intake, they still felt hunger cravings. In some cases, they actually lost weight during their first week off the starvation diet. If the findings of the Minnesota study apply, the Essex crew’s week on Henderson did little to restore their bodies’ reserves of muscle and fat. Now, three weeks later, the sailors were as close to starving to death as they’d ever been.
    The symptoms the men suffered as their boats lay becalmed on January 14, 1821, were similar to those experienced by the conscientious objectors in 1945. Chase reported that they barely had the strength “to move about in our boats, and slowly perform the necessary labors appertaining to [them].” That evening, when they sat up from the bottom of the boat, they experienced the same kind of blackouts that afflicted the men at the University of Minnesota. “Upon [our] attempting to rise again,” Chase wrote, “the blood would rush into the head, and an intoxicating blindness come over us, almost to occasion our suddenly falling down again.”
    Chase’s sufferings were so severe that he forgot to lock the lid of his sea chest before falling asleep in the bottom of the boat. That night one of the crew awoke the first mate and informed him that Richard Peterson, the old black man from New York who had led them all in prayer, had stolen some bread.
    Chase leaped up in a rage. “I felt at the moment the highest indignation and resentment at such conduct in any of our crew,” he wrote, “and immediately took my pistol in my hand, and charged him if he had taken any [bread], to give it up without the least hesitation, or I should instantly shoot him!” Peterson immediately returned the provisions, “pleading,” Chase wrote, “the hard necessity that urged him to do it.” Almost three times the age of anyone else in the boat, Peterson was reaching the end of his endurance, and he knew that without more bread, he would soon die.
    Nonetheless, the first mate felt that an example had to be made. “This was the first infraction,” he wrote, “and the security of our lives, our hopes of redemption from our sufferings, loudly called for a prompt and signal punishment.” But, as Nickerson observed, Peterson “was a good old man, and nothing but the cravings of a starved appetite could have induced him to be guilty of so rash an attempt.” Chase finally decided to grant him mercy. “I could not find it in my soul to extend towards him the least severity on this account,” he wrote, “however much, according to the strict imposition which we felt upon ourselves it might demand.” Chase warned Peterson that if he attempted to steal again, it would cost him his life.
    Light breezes persisted throughout the next day and into the following night. The tensions among Chase’s crew had begun to ease, but their individual suffering continued unabated, their bodies wracked by a hunger that the daily ration of an ounce and a half of bread hardly began to alleviate. Still, the distribution of provisions remained the most important part of the day. Some of the men attempted to