In the Heart of the Sea

two men in a whaleboat filled with bones.
    The men were not much more than skeletons themselves, and the story that would be passed from ship to ship in the months ahead was that they were “found sucking the bones of their dead mess mates, which they were loath to part with.” The Dauphin ’s captain, Zimri Coffin, ordered his men to lower a boat and bring the two survivors aboard. Like Chase, Lawrence, and Nickerson before them, Pollard and Ramsdell were too weak to stand and had to be lifted up to the whaleship’s deck. Both men were, in the words of a witness, “very low” when first brought aboard. But after being given some food, Pollard made an astonishing recovery.
    At around five o’clock that evening, the Dauphin spoke the whale-ship Diana from New York. The Diana ’s captain, Aaron Paddack, toward the end of a successful voyage, joined Captain Coffin for dinner. Also joining them was Captain George Pollard, Jr., formerly of the Essex.
    Like many survivors, Pollard was animated by a fierce and desperate compulsion to tell his story. Just as the gaunt, wild-eyed Ancient Mariner of Coleridge’s poem poured forth each harrowing detail to the Wedding Guest, so did Pollard tell them everything: how his ship had been attacked “in a most deliberate manner” by a large sperm whale; how they had headed south in the whaleboats; how his boat had been attacked once again, this time by “an unknown fish”; and how they had found an island where a “few fowl and fish was the only sustenance.” He told them that three men still remained on the island. He told of how the rest of them had set out for Easter Island and how Matthew Joy had been the first to die. He told of how Chase’s boat had become separated from them in the night and how, in rapid succession, four black men “became food for the remainder.” Then he told how, after separating from the second mate’s boat, he and his crew “were reduced to the deplorable necessity of casting lots.” He told of how the lot fell to Owen Coffin, “who with composure and resignation submitted to his fate.” Lastly he told of the death of Barzillai Ray, and how Ray’s corpse had kept both him and Ramsdell alive.
    Later that night, once he had returned to the Diana, Captain Paddack wrote it all down, calling Pollard’s account “the most distressing narrative that ever came to my knowledge.” The question now became one of how the survivors would fare in the dark shadow of their story.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    Homecoming

    O N FEBRUARY 25, 1821, Chase, Lawrence, and Nickerson arrived in Valparaiso, Chile’s largest port, set on a steep hill facing north across a wide bay. At any other time the story of the Essex would have captivated the city. But in February and March of that year, the citizens of Valparaiso were tensely awaiting news from the north. Revolutionary forces, having already secured Chile’s independence from Spain, were bearing down on Royalists in Lima. It was Peru, not a few American castaways, that demanded Valparaiso’s attention, allowing the Essex survivors to recuperate in relative privacy.
    From the beginning Chase and his men spoke openly about having resorted to cannibalism. On the day of the Nantucketers’ arrival, the keeper of the port’s official log of incoming and outgoing vessels matter-of-factly reported that the captain of the Indian had picked up three men who “survived with a little water and crackers . . . and with a shipmate that died and that they ate in the term of eight days.”
    The U.S. frigate Constellation was anchored at Valparaiso, and the acting American consul, Henry Hill, arranged to have Chase, Lawrence, and Nickerson taken to it. Even though it had been a week since their rescue, the survivors still presented an affecting sight. “[T]heir appearance . . . was truly distressing,” wrote Commodore Charles Goodwin Ridgely, commander of the Constellation, “bones working through their skins, their legs and feet much smaller and the whole surface of their bodies one entire ulcer.” Ridgely placed the three men under the care of his surgeon, Dr. Leonard Osborn, who supervised their recovery in the frigate’s sickbay deep in the forward part of the third deck. It may have been hot and airless, but for three men who had spent eighty-nine consecutive days beneath the open sky, it was a wonderful comfort.
    The crew of the Constellation was so profoundly moved by the sufferings of Chase and his men that