“On November 20, 1820, a great whale rammed the Nantucket whaler Essex, two thousand miles west of Ecuador. Owen Chase, her first mate, and twenty-nine other men took to the boats; eight eventually survived. Herman Melville’s debt to Chase’s Narrative has been known since Moby-Dick appeared, but little has been known about Chase and the survival of the crew . . .
“Heffernan’s study belongs on the shelf of every Melville scholar and anyone interested in an exciting tale.” —Choice
“Moving . . . [Hefferman] has brought together new information about the Essex and her crew, the rescue of her survivors, and subsequent accounts of their ordeal that goes far beyond any single study previously in print.” —Resources for American Literary Study
“The astonishing list of books, logs, manuscripts, court records, ships’ registers, and museum records attest to the diligent weeks, months, and even years that have finally resulted in a volume that entrances the reader with yarns of the sea. All the drama is still there, intact.” —Ocean
Includes illustrations.
“On November 20, 1820, a great whale rammed the Nantucket whaler Essex, two thousand miles west of Ecuador. Owen Chase, her first mate, and twenty-nine other men took to the boats; eight eventually survived. Herman Melville’s debt to Chase’s Narrative has been known since Moby-Dick appeared, but little has been known about Chase and the survival of the crew . . .
“Heffernan’s study belongs on the shelf of every Melville scholar and anyone interested in an exciting tale.” —Choice
“Moving . . . [Hefferman] has brought together new information about the Essex and her crew, the rescue of her survivors, and subsequent accounts of their ordeal that goes far beyond any single study previously in print.” —Resources for American Literary Study
“The astonishing list of books, logs, manuscripts, court records, ships’ registers, and museum records attest to the diligent weeks, months, and even years that have finally resulted in a volume that entrances the reader with yarns of the sea. All the drama is still there, intact.” —Ocean
Includes illustrations.
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Overview
“On November 20, 1820, a great whale rammed the Nantucket whaler Essex, two thousand miles west of Ecuador. Owen Chase, her first mate, and twenty-nine other men took to the boats; eight eventually survived. Herman Melville’s debt to Chase’s Narrative has been known since Moby-Dick appeared, but little has been known about Chase and the survival of the crew . . .
“Heffernan’s study belongs on the shelf of every Melville scholar and anyone interested in an exciting tale.” —Choice
“Moving . . . [Hefferman] has brought together new information about the Essex and her crew, the rescue of her survivors, and subsequent accounts of their ordeal that goes far beyond any single study previously in print.” —Resources for American Literary Study
“The astonishing list of books, logs, manuscripts, court records, ships’ registers, and museum records attest to the diligent weeks, months, and even years that have finally resulted in a volume that entrances the reader with yarns of the sea. All the drama is still there, intact.” —Ocean
Includes illustrations.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819573773 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wesleyan University Press |
| Publication date: | 01/21/2022 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 416 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
OWEN CHASE
It lies so far out in the sea, that tiny sickle of land, that one wonders how the Indians ever found it. The old legend, retold in chapter 14 of MobyDick, that an Indian baby was carried out over the ocean in an eagle's talons and that the parents pursued it in a canoe until they fell upon Nantucket, seems to be a right myth for the island, even though one who has caught sight of Nantucket on a clear day from one of the modest elevations north of Hyannis knows there were more pedestrian — or remigian — ways of coming upon it.
The voyager who makes the crossing today steps onto an island that has, with some appropriateness, almost exactly the shape that Thomas More gave to his island of Utopia. But this island is a built-up desert, a sandbar, albeit one of the most enterprising and prosperous sandbars in history. Even saying it is a desert calls for some qualification. It is fertile for many plants — including secret patches of heather; Nantucketers do not import weeds, as Herman Melville facetiously suggested, or send overseas for wood to plug a hole. But what Melville said about the Nantucketers' energetic business with the whale needs no qualification: "And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans." When Melville wrote, Nantucket meant whaling wherever its name was spoken; the ant-hill was known in most nations that had ocean ports.
American whaling did not begin on Nantucket; it had already started on Long Island in the middle of the seventeenth century before Nantucket was settled. Immemorially known to Indians and by white men discovered in 1602, Nantucket was sold to a group of partners in 1659, one of whom, Thomas Macy, became the island's first white settler. Nantucketers, the old histories relate, began their whaling business around 1668 when a whale entered their harbor and stayed three days, long enough for them to fashion a harpoon and kill it. In 1672 they engaged James Lopar to conduct whaling in partnership with the town; in 1690 they brought over the — quite literally — legendary Ichabod Paddack from Cape Cod to school them in whaling. (Ichabod was real, but he is probably most remembered for the yarn — now spun in children's books — about his frequent Jonah-like visits to the bowels of a whale where he was welcomed by an enticing mermaid.) Shore whaling yielded to the fitting out of thirty-ton vessels for six-week cruises and seventy-ton vessels for longer cruises down the Atlantic and to the Grand Banks. In 1712 Christopher Hussey killed the first sperm whale, and in 1745 the Nantucketers exported their first whale oil to England. By 1763 Nantucket ships were operating off the coast of Africa and by 1774 off the coast of Brazil. On March 25, 1793, the Beaver, Capt. Paul Worth, returned to Nantucket from the Pacific with 1,300 barrels of oil, the first Nantucket ship to have rounded Cape Horn. From that day on, Nantucket and the Pacific were wedded. Today's visitor to Nantucket finds the Pacific Club at one end of Main Street and the Pacific National Bank at the other, while a map of the Pacific Ocean is dotted with Nantucket names like Gardner's Island, Swain's Island, and — sure enough — New Nantucket. There were even more Nantucket names in the Pacific before the islands began, largely in this century, to be reclaimed by their native names. There was, indeed, a Chase's Island, which is now Arorae of the Gilberts.
The American whaling industry grew and prospered despite setbacks from natural disasters, the revolutionary war, pirates, competition, legislative restraint, and market fluctuation. It was growing impressively at the end of the eighteenth century, and Nantucket still had the primacy among whaling ports that it was not to lose to New Bedford until late in the 1820s.
In 1763 a doggerel verse had listed all of Nantucket's then captains, seventy-five of them, drawn from twenty-eight families such as the Coffins, Folgers, Starbucks, Gardners, Husseys, Swains, Myricks, Delanos, Colemans, Bocotts, Bunkers, and Barnards. If the verse had been updated fifty years later, most of the old names would have remained in it, but a few new ones would have had to be added — Joy, Russell, Luce, Ray, Meader, and Chase.
There were a number of prominent Chase captains sailing out of Nantucket — Reuben, Shubael, and George B., to name but a few — and the Chases were a sizable clan. The islanders spoke of "the thousand Dunhams" and "the thousand Chases," quite a tribute when coming from a Coffin or a Folger whose own families seemed to have been granted the stellar multiplicity promised to Abraham in his descendants.
Most of the Nantucket Chases traced their lineage back to two brothers, Thomas and Aquila, who settled in Hampton, New Hampshire, in 1639. Through Lt. Isaac Chase of Martha's Vineyard their line descended to the majority of Nantucket Chases. But Owen Chase was not one of these.
A certain mystery has surrounded Owen Chase's origins. The ordinary genealogical instruments of Nantucket — the Vital Records of Nantucket, the Folger Records, and the Barney Records — all identify Owen's father, Judah, but at that point they stop, save to make provocative references to Judah's mother: "Judah ..., s. — — — and Desire" and "Desire Chase ('a stranger')." So mysterious does Grandmother Desire appear that one might wonder if that was her real name or if the historians had made her a personification like a classical goddess. Over a century after her death there were allusions to Desire at a Chase family reunion that made her still mysterious, Desire's great-great-grandson recalled. One Nantucket historian says quite explicitly, "Desire Chase — was born ? date — Gave birth to Judah out of wedlock." And that does seem to be the universal Nantucket oral tradition on the matter.
That tradition would have been more acceptable if it had come supported by evidence, especially since the evidence is abundantly available in vital records of the town that Desire came from, Yarmouth. Even some of the Nantucket records mention her Yarmouth origin.
Yarmouth, which is situated on Cape Cod right across the water from Nantucket, is as important a seat of the Chase family as Nantucket is, but the Yarmouth Chases are not from the line of Thomas and Aquila; they go back to William Chase, who was born around 1595, came to America in 1630 with Governor Winthrop, was a member of the first church in Roxbury, the minister of which was the celebrated John Eliot, and moved to Yarmouth in 1638. His son William and grandson John brought the family down to the point where some light begins to be shed on Desire. And at this point a diagram is nearly indispensable (Appendix H), for John's son Isaac became the father of Desire, and John's son Thomas became the grandfather of Desire's husband, Archelus Chase. On its face the result is nothing more than the marriage of first cousins once removed, a relationship that was neither forbidden nor uncommon at the time.
Dates add something to the picture; those given in The Chase Family of Yarmouth indicate that Desire's father, Isaac, married his first wife, Mary Berry, on May 23, 1706, and his second wife, Charity O'Kelley (Desire's mother), August 3, 1727, and that Desire was born March 6, 1741. Archelus Chase's birth date is given as May 17, 1740, and the year of his marriage to Desire as 1764.
These same records give Judah Chase's birth date as March 26, 1765, indicating that at least at the time of his birth his parents were married. But on this detail they are almost certainly wrong. Against their date of Judah's birth stands the March 26, 1764, given by the Vital Records of Nantucket, the Barney Records, the 1820 Nantucket census, and private records of Mrs. Charlotte Giffin King, a lifelong researcher into Owen Chase. So there is reason to support the Nantucket belief that Owen's father was born out of wedlock.
That is neither here nor there, of course, except that it would tend to explain why the Nantucket records fall silent at Desire. The puzzle presented by the marriage of the cousins, however, becomes more enticing the more that the diagram is filled in with dates, siblings, and their marriages. It opens to the genealogist "a vague field for ... surmise," as did an unclear curriculum vitae in Billy Budd. The genealogical appendix at the end of the book contains more detail on these generations of the family.
The place of Judah Chase's birth is even less clear than the date, the Pollard papers saying he was born off the island and Mrs. King's records indicating that he was born on it. But in any event Nantucket was the only place he was ever associated with. He was a farmer, not, as far as records indicate, a seaman. In 1787 he married Phoebe Meader, daughter of a large and prominent Island family today commemorated in Nantucket's Meader Street.
Phoebe Meader was a distant cousin of Benjamin Franklin through her Wyer, Swain, and Folger ancestors. Owen Chase's precise relationship to Benjamin Franklin was first cousin four times removed.
Judah Chase settled in the Newtown section of Nantucket, an area south of the center of town, where for a while he owned a house jointly with David Wyer with whom he had family ties through the Meaders. He subsequently owned land closer to town between Beaver and Spring streets and owned other land as well. Whether he had a house on the Beaver Street property is not clear, but he also acquired other land including a lot and house two blocks from the Beaver Street property, which in time he sold to his son Owen.
To Judah and Phoebe Chase were born eight children. Benjamin, the first, died as a young man from drowning in the harbor in March 1809; his birth date has not been recorded. Eliza was born in 1791, William in 1794, Owen on October 7, 1796, Joseph M. in 1800, George G. in 1802, Alexander M. in 1805, and Susan in 1806. In 1808 Judah's wife Phoebe died, and in the same year he married Ruth Coffin, forty years old, by whom he had one daughter, Maria, born in 1812.
All five of Judah's surviving sons turned to the sea, and all five in time became whaling captains, an accomplishment that would distinguish the family even in Nantucket. The rapid rise of all of them to captain suggests that they started their sea careers at the earliest possible ages — they were all captains in their late twenties, save Alexander who was thirty at the time of his first known captaincy.
Judah Chase had the satisfaction of seeing all of his sons rise to captain, complete their sailing careers, and retire from the sea before his death in 1846.
About Owen Chase's early years little is known. He clearly had some schooling, but it is hard to know where. Public schools were not founded on the Island until 1827, except for a short-lived effort in 1716 to establish one. There were some Quaker schools, dame schools, cent schools, and infant schools, but in 1818 a town committee reported that there were between three and four hundred children in the town between the ages of three and fourteen who could not afford private schooling.
The soundest evidence we have of Owen's literacy is the 1836–40 log of the Charles Carroll. Owen, the captain, kept the log himself, as is clear from his first-person references, and it demonstrates an adequate mastery of the written language in most matters save spelling. Whether or not we should read Owen's Narrative of the Essex shipwreck as coming from his pen is a question left for chapter 5.
Owen's religious upbringing cannot be determined from extant Nantucket church records. His name does not appear in surviving Baptist, Methodist Episcopal, or Congregational church records or in records of the Quaker Meetings. But Owen's sister-in-law Winnifred, the wife of Joseph M. Chase, is on the Quaker records from 1834 to 1844 (the year that Joseph and family left Nantucket), and a tradition has been passed on in Joseph Chase's family that the Chases were Quakers. If the text of Owen's Narrative accurately reflects his sentiments, he was a devout man; most likely these are accurate impressions, for a similar piety is manifest in a letter (quoted in chapter 4) of Joseph Chase.
What Owen's first ship was and how old he was when he sailed on it are not known, but what his second — or perhaps third — ship was is known. On June 11, 1817, at the age of twenty he sailed from Nantucket on a whaling voyage on the Essex under Capt. Daniel Russell and a first mate named George Pollard, Jr. However much sea experience he had had at that time he was certainly not a green hand, for he was hired as boatsteerer, and no one became boatsteerer on his first voyage.
The boatsteerer's, or harpooner's, duties are graphically described in chapter 62, "The Dart," of Moby-Dick: after the harpooner rises from his forward oar, pitches his harpoon into the whale, and stands back from the speeding line, the headsman comes forward, exchanges positions with the harpooner, and uses his lance to pierce the whale's vital organs.
Had Owen's first voyage or voyages been on the Essex? There is a suggestive continuity of service between the 1817 voyage of the Essex and its 1819 voyage: Captain Russell retired, the first mate moved up to captain, and the boatsteerer moved up to first mate. One is led to guess that Boatsteerer Chase and Mate Pollard had served each in a lower grade on the Essex's 1815 voyage. Owen would have been eighteen years old at that time. And before that? Owen's brother Joseph went to sea at the age of fifteen and Owen as captain of the Winslow was to have thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds serving under him. It was common for boys to go out on whaling ships at this age. Owen's 1817 voyage may well have been his third.
In any event young Seaman Chase arrived back in Nantucket from the Pacific on April 9, 1819, after an almost two-year voyage on the Essex, a fairly prosperous voyage for a ship of that size, resulting in 160 barrels of whale oil and 1,260 barrels of the more valuable sperm whale oil. Owen's lay from the voyage was one sixty-second, that is, his pay was one sixty-second of the profits.
This money gave him something to live on and something to get married on; on April 28, 1819, about three weeks after he returned from sea, he married Peggy Gardner. They had part of the spring and early summer together before Owen went to sea again on August 12, 1819, this time as first mate of the Essex. On April 16, 1820, while the Essex was cruising and taking whales off the coast of Chile, Owen's first child, Phebe Ann, was born back in Nantucket.
The Essex, which by this time Owen had gotten to know inside out, was not a new ship — it had been sailing for twenty years when Owen went out as first mate. The ship is described in its original register:
William Bartlet of Newburyport in the State of Massachusetts Merchant, having ... sworn that he is the only owner of the Ship or vessel called the Essex of Newburyport whereof George Jenkins is at present master, and is a citizen of the United States, as he hath sworn and that the said ship or vessel was built at Amesbury in the said state this present Year One thousand seven hundred and Ninety Nine, And Michael Hodge surveyor of this District having certified that the said ship or vessel has two decks and three masts and that her length is eighty seven feet, seven inches her breadth twenty five feet her depth twelve feet six inches and that she measures two hundred thirty eight tons; and seventy two ninety fifths that she is a square sterned ship has no Gallery and no figure head.
Subsequent registers of the Essex make it possible to trace its history. On May 7, 1804, a temporary register was issued in Newburyport indicating that the ship had been sold to David Harris (who was also its master) and Sylvanus Macy of Nantucket. Two months after this temporary register was issued, the new Nantucket owners brought the ship home to its new port, and on July 7, 1804, a permanent Nantucket register was issued. On June 21, 1815, a permanent Nantucket register was issued for the Essex indicating that the owners were Daniel Russell, Walter Folger, Gideon Folger, David Harris, Philip H. Folger, Benjamin Barnard, Paul Macy, and Tristram Starbuck, "all of Nantucket." Some notations made on the back of this register indicate that a contemplated change of captain after the 1815 voyage (which Owen Chase may have been on) never took place: on November 19, 1816, the Essex returned from its 1815 voyage; four days later Tristram Pinkham replaced part-owner Daniel Russell as captain, but on May 26, 1817, two weeks before the ship was to sail on the voyage on which Owen Chase was boatsteerer, Daniel Russell resumed the captaincy. Another notation on this same register records George Pollard's replacement of Daniel Russell as captain on April 5, 1819, about four months before the Essex sailed on its last voyage. The last register of the Essex was issued August 10, 1819, two days before it sailed, and listed Paul Macy, Walter Folger, [Philip H.?] Folger, Gideon Folger, David Harris, Job Smith, Benjamin Barnard, and Tristram Starbuck as owners. On the back of this register is written: "Surrender at Nantucket August 6, 1821. Ship sunk at Sea."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Stove by a Whale"
by .
Copyright © 1990 Thomas Farel Heffernan.
Excerpted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
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