Eating Owen: The Imagined True Story of Four Coffins from Nantucket

by Ann E. Beidler

Overview

Eating Owen is a tale of mystery. What really happened to Owen Coffin, the cabin boy on the Nantucket whaling ship Essex? In the autumn of 1819, the unthinkable happened. Out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean a whale rammed into the Essex, sinking it within minutes (the event that helped inspire Melville's Moby-Dick). The crew had no refuge except to jump into the three small and very flimsy wooden boats they carried on board to help them chase the whales. During the next three months, bobbing around aimlessly on the open ocean, the men suffered terribly. They ran out of food to eat, and some of them died. And some of them ate each other. Including Owen. The few survivors returned to Nantucket with the story that Owen had been fairly elected to be executed--before he was eaten. But no one knows for sure what happened. Or do we? Eating Owen is the story of Owen Coffin and his family before the Essex tragedy. It is a story about a family, a story about surviving and not surviving. A story about a whale's revenge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603810227
Publisher:	Epicenter Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/27/2009
Pages:	182
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.45(d)

About the Author

ANNE E. BEIDLER lives in the seaport of Seattle,not far from members of her family. Her Pacifichome is a continent away from Nantucket, theAlantic seaport where, more than a century and ahalf ago, the whaling ship Essex sailed off on itsill-fated sea hunt. With a doctorate in educationalresearch, she is a lifetime history buff.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Facts

The large, wooden Nantucket whaling ship Essex was sunk, in November, 1819, by an apparently angry sperm whale. The captain, George Pollard, and his twenty crew members had only a few minutes to take refuge in their three small whaling boats, much the size of life boats. They were able to take with them only a few supplies, enough to last them for only a short time in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Yet they lived in these small boats, with no shelter and almost no food, for many, many weeks.

They knew approximately where they were in the Pacific and Captain Pollard purposely decided to head for South America, almost 3,000 miles away, rather than for any of the relatively nearby islands, which he believed were inhabited by cannibals.

Pollard's boat, which contained Owen Coffin also, was soon attacked by another whale, but the men were able to drive off that whale and repair their boat. The three boats then came upon a small island, where they stopped to look for water and food. Even though the island proved to be barren, three of the crew elected to stay there and take their chances, rather than continue to float aimlessly across the vast desert of the central Pacific.

The three small boats stayed together for quite a while, but eventually were separated by chance and by weather. The First Mate's boat was the first to disappear from Pollard's sight, although it was much later rescued. The other boat disappeared completely and was never seen or heard of again. On Pollard's boat, only the captain and young Charles Ramsdell were still alive when their boat was rescued, three months later, by Captain Zimri Coffin's whaling ship, the Dauphin.

The men on all three boats ran out of food and water and eventually subsisted on human flesh.

When he returned to Nantucket, the First Mate, Owen Chase, wrote an account of the Essex disaster. Fifty years later, his cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson, also wrote about the tragedy. Herman Melville, who had read Chase's account, used the Essex story in the climax of his Moby Dick.

Perhaps because the Essex was the only whaling ship ever known to be sunk by a whale, and because the surviving crew men, in order to avoid cannibals on the islands, eventually resorted to cannibalism themselves, people have long been fascinated by the Essex story. The story is usually told from a nautical point of view.

I have tried, however, to imagine how this story might have affected several members of one Nantucket family, the Coffin family, who were surely deeply touched by what happened to the Essex. Owen Coffin was on the ship Essex, and a distant cousin of his, Zimri, rescued the little boat that Owen had been on before he was shot and eaten. Nancy Bunker Coffin was Owen's mother, and Abigail Coleman Coffin was his grandmother. All these people really existed, but, of course, their words I have imagined.

I write my version of what I call Owen's story for my splendid grandchildren, who are related to the Coffin family, as well as to the Folger men who owned the Essex and hired Pollard to take it to the far away South Pacific to hunt for whales.

CHAPTER 2

Abigail Coleman Coffin

"I have a penis," said little Owen to his grandmother, "and Daddy does too. His is really big. How big is yours?"

"Grandmas don't need penises," his grandmother said. "At least not to carry around with them, flopping around and in the way of everything. Or maybe I should say we do need them, but we prefer to let other folks do the carrying."

"I like carrying mine," said Owen.

"And I like carrying you," said his grandmother. She scooped up the boy and carried him down to the point on the beach, at the tip of the island that reached farthest out into the sea. "I don't see any ships today," she said in a soft, tired voice. She leaned her face into his neck and thought that if it were not for this bright and beautiful boy, her special grandson, she would not have the strength to go on.

Little Owen looked at her as if he understood that there was a sadness in her that ran so deep it had become who she was. But he knew there was a tiny part of her that was different from the sadness. He loved it when she went back there to the long ago time. "Grandma," he said gently, "tell me about when you were a little girl and the whale talked to you."

"Gracious sakes, but that was ages ago, now, wasn't it?" Abigail said, not wanting to remember. "That horrid creature. I wish she'd never spoken a word to me. Yet perhaps I should have listened more carefully to what she said."

"Whales don't really talk, do they?" asked Owen, knowing very well what her answer would be.

Abigail Coffin brushed her graying hair back from her eyes, forgetting for a moment that she was old now and cranky sometimes, maybe even a lot of the time, and already a grandmother to seven little Nantucket children. As she felt the salty air brush her face, she wanted to sit down on the dry sand, up a ways from the scallops of water that glided across the gently sloping beach. "Come sit down here with me, my wonderful little O.," she said, "and I will tell you something about whales. They're not all bad like that one."

"But did you talk to that same whale every time?" Owen asked his grandma, "And did the whale really talk to you just like I'm talking now? And did she speak English like we do? And how did you know it was a girl whale?" He hoped that one of these questions would get his grandmother going with the story that he loved to hear.

Abigail took handful after handful of sand and covered their four feet as her mind wandered back to that happier time. A time when she wanted only to be a whaler's wife and maybe live in a big house with a walk on top and take good care of all her children there until her brave ship's captain came home, pushing through the crowds at the pier to reach only her. A time before she heard the words of the whale.

Abigail used to go down to this very same beach with her friend Lydia. They pulled up their skirts and ran into the waves as far as they could before racing each other back to safety. They always got wet all over eventually and came home all soaked so that everyone knew they had been out playing when they should have been helping in the gardens.

On that one day, the day Abigail wished had never happened, she and Lydia had made an excuse to leave the hot garden work and go down to the point to catch some fish for supper. They took along a pail and a big butcher knife that Lydia always used to gut the fish and to pry clams open. They were feeling silly and free, knowing that they had the afternoon to themselves.

"Abigail," Lydia said to her friend, "Nathaniel and I love each other. He wants me to marry him, but I tell him I will not. It's impossible."

"But if you love each other, why is it impossible to marry?" asked young Abigail, baiting her hook and throwing it in the water.

"Because he has not killed his first whale yet," said Lydia. "He is already nineteen and been out two times and he has not yet struck a whale's flesh. I refuse to marry him until he proves he is a man!"

"Of course," said Abigail, who herself had her eye on a young farmer, the handsome Hezekiah Coffin, whom she was trying very hard to persuade to go to sea. He was strong, she knew, but his love of the land would get him nowhere in the Nantucket world. Why couldn't he just try the whaling life for a year or two at least? It was the only way to get rich on this island where only the rich had any fun and she wanted to have fun. She wanted to have a husband she was proud of, one that Lydia and the others would admire. How they would envy her for being the wife of the most successful whaling captain on Nantucket!

"What about Hezekiah?" asked Lydia. "Has he killed his whale yet?"

"No, not yet," said Abigail sadly. "He says he will do anything for me because he loves me so, but I guess that does not include leaving his sheep."

"It seems that men get to do all the glorious things," said Lydia, "while we must stay on this boring island and wait around for one of them to get brave or lucky. I sometimes wish I could go to sea and do the job myself."

"Well, I'm not waiting," said Abigail. "I'm not waiting for anybody. I'm going to live my life my way and not wait to fit into somebody else's. Maybe I will dress up as a man and sail to the South Pacific and meet those monster whales face to face and come back here a hero." She pulled in a small codfish, cleaned it, and put it in the pail.

"Oh, Abigail," said Lydia, "don't talk such foolishness. You'll wait for your Hezekiah, just like the rest of us wait. That's what we women on Nantucket do. We wait for our men. But let's not wait here any longer. Let's move a ways down the beach. I'll race you, Abigail."

They giggled as they raced through the lapping water. These two girls, who were almost women, still in that delicious in-between place where it seems you can hold on to the advantages of both. They slowed down, however, when they noticed a dark mass lying along the beach some distance ahead of them. "Whatever is that up there?" asked Lydia.

"Probably just the rotting wreck of somebody's old fishing boat," said Abigail.

Lydia hurried ahead, but stopped suddenly. "My heavens," she gasped, "it's a whale baby. Look, he's still breathing. But he can't stay here. He needs to be in the water with his mother. How do you suppose he got here, Abigail?"

Abigail did not want to get too close. "Don't touch him," she said.

"I just want to comfort him," said Lydia, putting her hand gently on his sandy skin. "He must be so scared, and I just want to tell him everything will be all right."

"But it won't be," said Abigail angrily. "He's dying there and soon he will start to stink, so we'd better get away from here."

"Abigail Coleman!" snapped Lydia, "how can you be so cruel?"

"Me, cruel?" said Abigail. "You are the one who said it first. That you wanted to be a whaler and not wait for the men to do the killing. Here is your chance. Kill this whale and then everybody will know that you are as brave as any man."

"Kill that baby? Why, I would never kill a baby whale," said Lydia. What kind of person do you think I am?"

"I think you don't practice what you preach," said Abigail. "I think if we want our men to kill whales for us, then we ought to be willing to do the same."

"Abigail, don't!" shouted Lydia, shrinking back in horror.

Abigail reached into her bundle for the butcher knife. Holding it with both hands, she held it over her head as she approached the baby whale. With all her strength, over and over again she plunged the huge knife blade into the head of the whale. Blood spouted up in her face and over her hair and onto her soaked and sandy skirt. The sand sucked up most of the baby's blood, but still more and more came out of the jagged holes that Abigail made.

Lydia choked back tears as they scrambled up the dunes toward home, but Abigail could not stop laughing. "I am a woman now," she shouted to the sky, "for I have killed my first whale!"

"Well, maybe you can marry Hezekiah now," said Lydia bitterly, "now that you have killed a whale for him. Then he can stay home with the sheep and the children and you can be the whaler in the family."

The next day Abigail went back to that spot on the beach, carrying a long knife and a large basket, to carve what meat she could from her whale's carcass. But the whale was gone. Only a darkened place on the thirsty sand remained and even that was washing away as the tide brushed it back and forth in its methodical way.

"You have shamed me, Abigail," said Hezekiah.

"Oh, Hezekiah, that was not my intention," said Abigail.

"Of course, it was," he said sadly. "You say you love me, but you want to change me. You do not love me just the way I am."

"But I do," she said, "I love your eyes with their hint of blue, like the sea. I love your shoulders, so strong you could carry me away. I even love your silly Coffin pride that makes you think you can do anything you want in this world."

"Silly Coffin pride?" he asked. "How dare you call it silly? You wouldn't be here now–none of us would be here now, in fact, if it weren't for my great, great grandfather Tristram. He founded this place."

"Well," said Abigail, "he didn't found it all by himself. With all his money, Tristram Coffin would have been wiped out here if it had not been for my great, great grandfather Peter Folger who taught him how to deal with the Indians."

"The point is," said Hezekiah, "that you shamed me before the whole island. Now everybody thinks that you killed that whale because I am afraid to go to sea and kill one myself."

"I only meant to shock Lydia," Abigail said. "She is so pious sometimes, thinking that things have to go her way always and poor Nathaniel has to measure up to her standards."

"Poor Nathaniel?" said Hezekiah. "What about me? At least Nathaniel loves the seafaring life and wants to make his way there. I have no love for it. Plenty of Coffins have captained ships and plenty of Coffins have lost their lives out there, so I have nothing to prove. Except to you."

"I know," Abigail said, "you love the land. You love helping things grow, whether plants or lambs, and you are good at it too. I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too," said Hezekiah. "I'm sorry that now I have to leave all this, and you, and sign up on some stupid ship just to prove that I can do this thing you have shamed me into doing."

"I just want us to have a good life," said Abigail.

"You call it a good life with me gone for three years at a time? You call it a good life with me being trapped on a smelly ship with a bunch of barbarians? You call it a good life for me to risk mine in order to take the life of another of God's creatures? Why, I can't even kill a sheep."

"I want a good house, Hezekiah," said Abigail softly. "I want rooms for our babies so they don't have to grow up the way I did, all the children piled into one freezing bed with no sheets. I want the neighbors to look up to me for once. I am sick of their sideways glances, their condescending ways. Once a Coleman, always a Coleman, they say, in that way of theirs that makes it clear that being a Coleman is a very bad thing indeed."

"I know," said Hezekiah, pulling her to him. "I know your life has been hard. I want you to always be safe and comfortable. When I hold you like this, I think that for you I will do anything, even leave my sheep."

And he did. Hezekiah left his sheep and went to sea. But that is another story and not a happy one at all, at least not in the end.

Abigail, sitting there beside Owen on the windy beach, pulled her mind back to the present. There were a lot of things she was glad to forget by now. A widow for more than twenty years, she should be accustomed to her quiet life. No one to wait for now, except this boy sitting beside her who wandered across the patch to visit her almost every day.

"Owen," she said sharply to the boy digging little holes with a shell in the sand, "Don't you ever go to sea and hunt the whales. Do you hear me?"

"Yes," he said, "but why?"

"Because it's dangerous and I don't want you to get hurt," Abigail said.

"Like Cousin Zacheus?" asked Owen in a somber voice.

"Yes, poor Zacheus," said Abigail. "He was such a good boy, and I told him not to go too. I even made him promise me that he would never go to sea, but he went anyway and now he's dead, and nobody even knows where."

"But all the men here go to sea, don't they?" asked Owen.

"Most of them do, unfortunately," said Abigail, "but not all, not by any means. Somebody has to build the ships and sell the ropes and hammer the harpoons and grow the crops and make the shoes and teach the children in school and so many other things."

"I want to kill a whale," said Owen, "so they won't call me a sissy. I'll make you proud."

"No, Owen," Abigail almost shouted. "I will never let you go. I won't let the whale get you too. Not you."

"Silly Grandma," he said. "I'm not afraid of the whales."

"You don't have to be afraid of them," Abigail said, "but you need to understand that some of them are very angry with us, and one of them is very angry with me."

"Why are they angry?" asked Owen.

"Because we hurt them," Abigail said. "We chase them and scare them and kill them when we can. We fill them with spear holes and make them bleed to death and then carve up their bodies and cook them for oil. They don't like that."

"But whales don't think," said Owen. "They don't think and feel things like we do, do they?"

(Continues…)

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