In the Heart of the Sea

the stirrings of a death wish as dark and palpable as the pillarlike cloud ahead.
    At seven o’clock the next morning, February 18, Chase was sleeping in the bottom of the boat. Benjamin Lawrence was standing at the steering oar. Throughout the ordeal, the twenty-one-year-old boatsteerer had demonstrated remarkable fortitude. He was the one who, two months earlier, had volunteered to swim underneath the boat to repair a sprung plank. As Lawrence had watched Peterson, Cole, and now Nickerson lose their grip on life, he had clung, as best he could, to hope.
    It was something his careworn family had become good at. His grandfather, George Lawrence, had married Judith Coffin, the daughter of a well-to-do merchant. For many years the Lawrences had been part of the island’s Quaker elite, but by the time Benjamin came into the world, his grandfather had suffered several financial reversals. The proud old man decided to move to Alexandria, Virginia, where, he told an acquaintance, he could “descend into a humble sphere among strangers, rather than . . . remain in a place where every object reminded him of his lost prosperity.” When Benjamin was ten years old, his father died during a voyage to Alexandria, leaving his wife with seven children to support.
    Safe in Lawrence’s pocket was the piece of twine he had been working on ever since they’d left the wreck. It was now close to twelve inches long. He leaned into the steering oar and scanned the horizon.
    “There’s a sail!” he cried.
    Chase immediately scrambled to his feet. Just visible over the horizon was the speck of pale brown that Lawrence had taken for a sail. Chase stared for several suspenseful moments, gradually realizing that, yes, it was a sail—the topgallant of a ship, about seven miles away.
    “I do not believe it is possible,” Chase wrote, “to form a just conception of the pure, strong feelings, and the unmingled emotions of joy and gratitude, that took possession of my mind on this occasion.”
    Soon even Nickerson was up on his feet and gazing excitedly ahead.
    Now the question was whether they could catch up to the much larger vessel. The ship was several miles to leeward, which was an advantage for the smaller vessel, and heading slightly north of their position, which meant that it might intercept their line of sail. Could their whaleboat reach that crossing point at approximately the same time the ship did? Chase could only pray that his nightmare of the missed rescue ship would not prove true. “I felt at the moment,” Chase wrote, “a violent and unaccountable impulse to fly directly towards her.”
    For the next three hours they were in a desperate race. Their battered old whaleboat skimmed lightly over the waves at between four and six knots in the northwesterly breeze. Up ahead, the ship’s sail plan continued to emerge from the distant horizon, revealing, with excruciating slowness, not only the topgallant sails but the topsails beneath and, finally, the mainsail and foresail. Yes, they assured themselves, they were catching up to the ship.
    There was no lookout at the vessel’s masthead, but eventually someone on deck saw them approaching to windward and behind. Chase and his men watched in tense fascination as the antlike figures bustled about the ship, shortening sail. Gradually the whaleboat closed the distance, and the hull of the merchantman rose up out of the sea, looming larger and larger ahead of them until Chase could read her quarterboard. She was the Indian from London.
    Chase heard a shout and through glazed, reddened eyes saw a figure at the quarterdeck rail with a trumpet, a hailing device resembling a megaphone. It was an officer of the Indian, asking who they were. Chase summoned all his strength to make himself heard, but his desiccated tongue stumbled over the words: “ Essex . . . whaleship . . . Nantucket.”
     
    THE narratives of shipwreck survivors are filled with accounts of captains refusing to take castaways aboard. In some instances the officers were reluctant to share their already low supply of provisions; in others they were fearful the survivors might be suffering from communicable diseases. But as soon as Chase explained that they were from a wreck, the Indian ’s captain immediately insisted that they come alongside.
    When Chase, Lawrence, and Nickerson attempted to climb aboard, they discovered that they didn’t have the strength. The three men stared up at the crew, their eyes wide