goddamnshinyrock:

goddamnshinyrock:

goddamnshinyrock:

someone: passing mention of cannibalism, as a joke

me: HEY SO HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE WRECK OF THE WHALESHIP ESSEX??

so people have now, of course, asked me to explain this and I started trying to type up a short version of the story and uhhhh

UHHHH

image

it took me TWO FULL PAGES to get to the bit where the ship sinks 

OKAY SO here is goddamnshinyrock’s version of the story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex, with bonus Notes On Whaling, which I am writing largely without looking things (other than numbers) up just to see if I CAN, so… expect some Chaos: 

  • The Essex was a whaling vessel out of Nantucket and in 1820, under Captain Pollard, with a crew of 21 men, she left port, headed for the Pacific whaling grounds 
    • by this point the whaling industry had largely extirpated the useable whale species in the Atlantic, so European and American whalers would sail south, stop over in the Azores or Madeira (or sometimes a Brazilian port) to add crew or supplies, round Cape Horn (through the most dangerous seas in the world!!), head north into the Pacific Ocean, catch enough whales to fill the hold with barrels of oil, and then do the whole thing in reverse. They’d expect to be gone for 3-5 years, rather than the 18 mo. voyages typical of Atlantic whaling.
    • Trivia: Herman Melville based the premise of Moby Dick on the fate of the Essex. 
  • Our cast: Captain Pollard, first mate Owen Chase, cabin boy Thomas Nickerson are the main names to remember (the latter two wrote their own accounts of the voyage, and the captain… was the captain). The crew was effectively in stratified into three social classes (This will all become important later):
    • 1. The white Nantucketers (Quakers), who included Pollard, Chase, and the second mate, considered themselves Above everyone else on board. This group also included Pollard’s young cousin, whom he had promised his family he’d look after. (That’s some ominous foreshadowing there for you there. )
    • 2. The white sailors NOT from Nantucket island, looked down on by the Nantucketers 
    • 3. The black sailors, looked down on by both of the previous groups 
  • The Essex had a series of mishaps before she even made it to the whaling grounds- she ran into a storm that caused damage and took out at least one of their whaleboats (20-ish ft long rowing boats, usually equipped with small sails, stored on deck and used when hunting the whales. Yes, they chased whales by rowing after them. Aren’t humans amazing?) and some assorted other bits of the ship. They did not stop for repairs before rounding the horn. 
    • They DID stop in the Galapagos Islands for resupply before heading to the whaling grounds. They grabbed a bunch of giant tortoises to be a living food supply, and then one of the crew committed arson played a fun prank on the way out, starting a wildfire that completely denuded one of the islands and may have caused the extinction of several species. 
    • We’re off to a good start, here. 

[Continue on google docs, because this is nearly six pages long, jesus christ.]