On November 20, 1820, the Nantucket whaling ship Essex was attacked by a sperm whale, and sank in mid-Pacific. The incident provided Herman Melville the ending for Moby Dick. It also sent the 20-man crew of the Essex zigzagging across open ocean for three months in three 23-ft. whaleboats. Eventually they resorted to cannibalism to survive. For more than 100 years the only known account was that of the first mate, Owen Chase. But this spring 100 pages written by Thomas Nickerson, who shipped on the Essex as a boy of 16, were found in an attic in Connecticut and sent to Edouard Stackpole, whaling expert and curator of the Peter Foulger Museum in Nantucket. Here are excerpts from Nickerson 's chronicle:
November 20. I being then at the helm and looking on the windward side of the ship saw a very large whale approaching us. I called out to the mate to inform him of it. On his seeing the whale he instantly gave me an order to put the helm hard up. I had scarcely time to obey the order, when I heard a loud cry from several voices at once, that the whale was coming foul of the ship. Scarcely had the sound of their voices reached my ears when it was followed by a tremendous crash, the whale had struck the ship with his head under the larboard fore chains at the water's edge with such force as to shock every man upon his feet. The whale then getting under the ship's bottom came up under the starboard quarters. This gave the mate a fine opportunity to have killed him with a throw of his lance. His first impulse was to do so, but on a second look, observing his tail directly beneath the rudder, his better judgment prevailed lest a flourish of the tail should unhang the rudder and render the ship unmanageable.
Could he have foreseen all that so soon followed he would probably have chosen the lesser evil and have saved the ship by killing the whale even at the expense of losing the rudder. For the monster took a turn off about 300 yards ahead, then turning short came around with his utmost speed and again struck the ship a tremendous blow with his head and with such force as to stove in the whole bow at the water's edge. One of the men who was below at the time came running upon deck saying "The ship is filling with water."