The one where we cover the beginning of one of the worst maritime disasters in history, the attack of the whaleship Essex by a Sperm Whale, and the inspiration for Moby Dick.
In late 1819 the whaleship Essex set off for a routine whaling trip before getting attacked by a freak whale.
Sources:
Wikis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Chase
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_whaling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_oil
Loose transcript:
Hi everyone. And welcome or welcome back to nightmare now the show where we take a look at all things scary, unknown or otherwise horrible, we talk history, myth, monsters and more and boy do I have a whale of a tale for you today. I feel like not a lot has changed over the course of the week so I can spare you any personal updates this week, and that works out well anyway because dear god this is a long involved story to get into. We’re finally doing another full deep dive episode and man have I had a time putting this one together. I’ve clipped up my notes and outlines a couple of different ways and I just can’t find a way to put it all together in one episode without skipping a week to pull it together. So this is going to be our very first sequential series. I feel like aside from technical issues I’ve gotten the hang of putting out a show mostly every week. With that being said I’m not doing these full super deep dive long form episodes as often as I want, but at the same time, I’ve been digging deeper for the shorter ones and even they’re getting longer as I get the hang of this, so eventually maybe they’ll meet in the middle over time.
Anyway I’m glad to have you along for the ride, but I’m afraid it'll be a harrowing one. In the early months of 1821 a whaleship happened across a peculiar sight in the distance, a small whaleboat, heavily modified through slapdash construction. It had a makeshift sail, reinforced sides, and it had obviously been drifting for quite some time. There didn’t appear to be anyone on board as waves lazily lapped against the small craft. All the same the captain of the whaleship turned about to investigate the pathetic little boat. When the crew could finally see over the deck into the sun bleached whaleboat, they were met with a violently unsettling sight. Two creatures, sinewy, thin, and emaciated. The floor of the boat was riddled with bones. Human bones. The creatures were curled up on either end of the boat and slurping on the marrow from the bones like something that would give bram stoker nightmares. Pale and wide eyes bulged out of their heads, sore covered skin pulled taut over their gaunt skulls and frail frames. They had beards red from dried blood and a madness about them. On seeing the witnesses to their bone collection funerary raft they jealousy gathered up as many of the bones as they could carry and recoiled back. Unwilling to surrender all that sustained them, and the last remnants of the crew they once captained. The crew of the whaleship looked down at th ghouls in abject horror. (RECORD SCRATCH) YUP THAT’S ME, I guess you’re wondering how I got in this situation, well, it’s a whale of a tale my friend. Name’s george pollard, and like many others my story begins thus. There once was a man from nantucket…
Lets dive into these murky depths. The whaleship essex facilitated one of the more famous maritime disasters in history, maybe behind the mutiny on the bounty and the shark attacks on the uss indianapolis, and I guess probably shackleton's ill fated voyage too. I guess I could go on, and on all those topics I certainly will. In future episodes. I think there’s something hugely compelling about maritime disasters. There’s the isolation of it, the secret chemical X in any great horror movie, certainly in my two favorites, the thing, an alien. And then there’s the human element. There’s something about the intersection of survival, isolation, the will to live, and the classic man vs nature struggle that resonates deep within our cultural consciousness. For each person there is the competing values of hope, tenacity, despair, fear, stubbornness and resilience and so many more factors, and for each person there is a breaking point. Some never reach it, some perish before hand, and some do, and at that point we either see an alien facsimile of humanity, or potentially humanity distilled into its purest form. Innocents turned killers, nobles turned barbaric survivors, cowards can become heroes. For the crew of the Essex, we witness all of the above and more.
During the 1820s when the event took place, it really became the talk of the world for a time. A ship from nantucket massachusetts, the whaling capital of the world was attacked and sunk by a freakish sperm whale. 21 people shipped off that day and most of them don’t ever make it home, and truth be told, not a single one of the survivors really came back at all. The men were changed irreparably. And perhaps when I finish this series, you’ll understand why.
Today the Essex disaster is just a footnote of 1800s trivia. Known mostly because a certain whaling author wrote something a lot of us had to read in school. A little novel called moby dick. When I read it in high school, I definitely spark noted some chapters, mostly the ones that tried to be more of a definitive guide on whaling rather than a novel, but the core story is hard to avoid. Captain ahab in his ludicrous quest for revenge, a great white whale, and the famous attack of the titular whale. But this quest didn’t spawn entirely from the mind of herman melville, who was himself a one time whaler before he found success writing, it was loosely based off of the true story of the ESSEX. Melville heard accounts of the tragedy and sought out survivors to give his novel the oomph it needed to be read or spark noted hundreds of years later. This series I’ll try to bring that real story to life as best I can, and maybe add a little bit of levity along the way.
Thanks for being patient last week, I really wanted to get this one right and push the limits of what a nightmare now show can really be. I hope you enjoy, lets get into the belly of the whale.
Now outside of new england it’s tough to understate the effect of whaling in the region, and outside of massachusetts doubly so, and outside of the tiny island of nantucket probably 100 times moreso. The island is just 14 miles across at it’s longest but it was the epicenter of whaling in the entire world. Whaling of course being the dangerous and lucrative enterprise of hunting whales, mostly for their oil. Made by boiling down the literal tons of blubber on a whales body. The main use of whale oil was of course, light. A society able to keep lamps going throughout the night was a huge advantage. But it didn’t stop there, not in houses and businesses alone. Streetlamps let a city’s business continue deep into the night, lighthouses made more whaling possible in a feedback loop. But no, the usefulness continues, without whale oil there would not have been an industrial revolution in the 1800s that lead to the world as we know it today. We can wax poetic about whether or not the industrial revolution was good for humanity as whole when we cover the unabomber but for now we’ll leave it at the fact that without industrialization we would be living on a planet devoid of the glory of the boneless chicken wing, a luxury only an industrial society could ever hope to achieve.
Whale oil was the lubricant in guns, machinery, and typewriters, and even until fucking 1973 whale oil was used in transmission fluids in modern cars. It was a long time before this stuff retired. Most industrial purposes were replaced after the invention of kerosene but whaling continued long after. We still use a chemical called ambergris today extracted from the intestines of sperm whales for perfume of all things, I think there was a blacklist episode on that at one point.
Furthermore baleen, the fibrous filters of baleen whales like the humpback or blue whales was used in a variety of fashion products like hats and umbrellas, blubber could be used to make whale margarine. Which reminds me, A while back I was looking at protein to calorie ratios of food and holy shit whale meat is top tier fitness food. You get almost 30 grams of protein per 100 calories it’s insane.
Then we get into your real money fish. Yeah I know whales are mammals, I don’t care I can call them fish. The sperm whale. Named for the spermaceti sloshing around in their big fat heads. And we still don’t know what it’s for. Biologically speaking that is. It is a special type of milky white,waxy, gooey clean burning, odorless oil compared to the crap they burn off of blubber. So when whaling they would cut open their heads and be like damn there's buckets and buckets o cum in their brain, that’s the good shit. It was a higher quality oil. And that’s how sperm whales got their name. Literally their heads are full of what 19th century whalers thought looked like cum. Like I said a minute ago, biologists still have no idea what the goop sloshing around in their heads is for. Some theories point to it being a excellent medium for echolocation where sound can travel 3 times as fast in spermaceti than it can in water and others say it’s for buoyancy, like the whales can suck up sea water, cool it down and increase the density making it easier to dive, or blow it out to warm it up and make it easier to surface. Ultimately, none of it is pertinent to this episode so we’re moving on.
The Eessex had been on several whaling adventures so far but the previous captain was retiring or taking on a new ship, ultimately it isn’t important to the story, ifyou want more detail check out the wonderful source for today’s episode, IN THE HEART OF THE SEA, by nathaniel philbrick, funny I knew a nate philbrick in high school hope he’s doing all right these days. I don’t want to go too deep into nantucket and the powers that be controlling the essex and it’s crew before they pulled up the anchor but it’s a lot of the bullshit you expect, nepotism, financiers and people with cash on the line deciding who is in charge, first mate, and other unimportant details. Suffice to say that funding and staffing a whaleship was a substantial expense and it really had the potential to pay off, given the lucrative nature of whaling in nantucket at the time. It was grueling work for the whalers and an interesting life for family back home, most people didn’t have their fathers around because the ships were out for years at a time. Families oftentimes would be married within a few months, get pregnant and the dude would take off and hope he got to meet his three year old when he got back. There’s some interesting dynamics at work there, where women had a large amount of power in society, compared to other areas at the same time.
So fuck the financiers, they really didn’t have anything much to do with the story especially in a dramatic podcast form, lets talk about the cast of the show, the crew of the essex. As listed in the book and ship records, I’m not gonna go through every last person’s life story but we’re talking at least an overview. I guess we should start with one of the main characters, the essex itself, a whaleship 87 feet long and displacing 238 tons of water it was fairly standard for the time. The previous captain daniel russel helmed another ship while his first mate george pollard took over as captain of the essex. It’s said repeatedly that russell took the luck from the essex, a previously successful whaling ship, when he left. Following george pollard in command, a nantucket boy, was the first mate, owen chase, whom spoiler alert survives, and is widely responsible for us knowing this story at all. Both nantucket lads. And that’s important too, because there’s a strict hierarchy on nantucket whaling ships, less of a hierarchy I guess because that’s the chain of command, but more of a preference. In trust, picking crew for the smaller whaleboats themselves, and general station and accommodations nantucket natives were number 1, it was an extremely tight knit community, most of which were quakers, following the nantucket guys wearing their trust me I’m local t shirts were the coofs, a derogatory term for off islanders, they could be better whalers, sailors and the like but 9 times outta ten they came after the nantucketers in the pecking order. Lastly were blacks. I don’t really know what to say about that one I don’t think anybody’s surprised there, pre industrial america generally wasn’t the most accommodating place and time for black people.
After the two officers you had second mate matthew joy, 3 boatsteerers, the guys working the rudders in the whaleboats themselves, 1 steward of the ship, 13 general sailors, there’s that lucky number again huh, and the cabin boy, thomas nickerson. Totalling up to 21 people on the boat. I don’t think you need all the other names right now, I’m not trying to overwhelm you like it’s game of thrones or anything, as people come up (And sink down) in the narrative I’ll try to remember to keep you abreast of their station.
Fast forward through some political drama between the owners of the ship, people saying goodbye to their wives and mothers and it was finally august 12, 1819. The day of the launch. And watching launches on nantucket was pretty much the only thing anyone did for fun, there weren't any video games yet. Not only did you have all the women in children but also the extremely judgemental retired whalers, watching for every mistake, so they’d have something to talk about the whole time you’re gone. Haters been hating a long time, and boy oh boy did stuff go wrong all the time, oftentimes half the crew were taking their first voyage out at these launches, imagine you’re starting a new job and not only do you have to figure it out, it’s dangerous and literally everyone you’ve ever known is watching. I’m sure it didn’t make it any easier.
As soon as they’re out of earshot from town too, the experienced crew start swearing like… well, sailor and slapping the new guys around, a stark contrast from the uiet calm of quaker nantucket. So all the new guys, some as young as 14 just start getting screamed at immediately, swab the deck or I’ll gut ye and all that good stuff and they see their home fading from view over the horizon and are just like what the fuck have I gotten myself into. A common thought perhaps, but most of the time they hadn’t gotten on an utterly doomed voyage like the essex. And then the seasickness, this is true they would tie pork fat to a string, make you swallow it and yank it back up out of your mouth, apparently that’s how to fix it. Sounds gross.
Just a day later the bad omens began. A huge storm approached off the side of the boat and in an act of hubris or hesitation instead of sailing directly into the storm, better yet, sailing away from it, they waited till the last minute to try to turn and let it hit from the stern. In delaying this maneuver, the storm hit full strength from the side, the worst possible outcome. The wind, gusts and waves hit from the largest possible surface area, and the essex began to tip over. With a great creaking and groaning in the howling wind the ship tilted almost 90 degrees sideways, almost sinking two days into the voyage. Just as they thought they might need to cut the masts loose in order to right the ship she lurched back upwards as equilibrium took hold. Some of the sails had been shredded in the carnage, one of the whale boats had been smashed in between the ship and the waves, leaving only 2 in working order and no spares. Captain pollard and the mates debated returning to nantucket for repairs but instead opted to forge ahead, taking chances in supply ports to repair the ship and get a new whaleboat. It seemed preferable to the shame of returning empty handed. Just days from leaving home. Plus the likeliness of people ditching the boat as soon as they got there, the old pork submarine life ain't for everyone after all.
After the excitement from the get go you have a nice slice of life sailing montage for months, on september second they reached the azores islands off the coast of europe, scooped some supplies, and dipped south towards the cape verde islands west of africa. Here they managed to snag an extra whaleboat, bringing their total to 4 after repairing the one damaged in the storm. They also made a lucrative trade offer with a ship that had gone aground in the verdes trading, a barrel and a half of beans for thirty squealing hogs! These delightful creatures supplemented literal tons of food for the journey. Salted meats, bread and hardtack. A sort of disgusting hard bread to meet the minimum caloric values people needed. Somewhere along the line pollard, chase and joy picked their crews for their respective whaleboats, with the captain and firstlmate getting all the nantuckets and leaving joy with the coofs and blacks. This would of course come into play when they finally saw their first whale in early october, off the coast of south america between rio de janeiro and buenos aries. With a THAR SHE BLOWS The hunt begins. They got within a nautical mile of the whale and jumped into the whaleboats, only 3 people remaining on the essex to keep it afloat. The remaining 18 divided between the 3 whaleboats set off racing one another to be the first to get up next to the beasties. Chase’s boat was the first one to catch up to the sperm whale and the harpooner, a man by the name of benjamin lawrence hesitated when faced with the awesome size of the whale. It blasted it’s spout over them, and just as he seems to finally come to his senses and aim WHAM all six of them are thrown into the air. THe whaleboat splinters as another whale breaches and tears it apart with its tail. The other two boats have to rescue the people in chase’s boat because get this, they can’t swim! You would think you take your whole life learning how to become a whaler that might be worth looking into, on account of you know, THE FUCKING WATER.
So the whales get away and the whole crew is pissed, they’re down another whaleboat and they've been underway for almost three months at this point with nothing to show for it except a fucking barnyard full of emaciated hog. A few days later they got a second chance and this time when they launched the boats someone got a hit. And the description of a kill is brutal, to my whale fans you probably just want to skip ahead five minutes here. Once a harpoon strikes true on a sperm whale it fastens to the creature and the whale boat gets tugged along in the ol nantucket sleighride, I’m sure now that’s some vile urban dictionary term these days involving dookie but back then it described the whaleboat being tugged along by the stuck whale. The whale would pull the boat something like 20 mph while the whale would tire itself out before surfacing for the last time. It would pull them all over but once a whaleboat was fastened, there wasn’t a whole lot it could do except launch the whaleboat into the sky, but most of the time they didn’t think of that. When they eventually tired out the mate or captain would have his chance to hit the creature with the killing lance. A specialized harpoon designed to tear up the creatures’s internal organs, but through tons of blubber it was hard to hit true, sometimes requiring 15 stabs to really get in there. The surefire indicator of success was a gruesome sight indeed. The creature would breath out through it’s blowhole and blast out a crimson spray of blood seawater and snot, it was choking on it’s blood and living it’s last minutes in abject terror. The whalers called this a fired chimeny as the largest creatures on earth shot out red mist with each breath. It’s admittedly sad, but whaling these days is pretty much dead outside of specially permitted indigeonus peoples. So that’s good. When the whale was struck true at some point it’s labored struggle would end suddenly and the creature would float up on its side ready for the grim harvest to come. The greenhorns on the crew weren’t really sure what to do at this point, at least spiritually and emotionally, all this talk hyping them up for the kill and then seeing one of god’s mightiest creatures writhing and spraying them with his blood really did a number on them psychologically. It didn’t take long for the more experienced among them to snap the new guys out of it but I really think threre’s something very profound in that minute of silence when nobody is cheering when the whale finally gives up the ghost and before the harvest kicks off. There’s emotional highs and lows all at once, they’re covered in blood, sad at the death of an almost mythical creature, proud at their ability to take it down and happy with the promise of a fat check when they got home. I find that internal conflict so interesting.
When they finally bring down the massive beast it’s time to harvest it. IT takes until nightfall to take the carcass to the ship and that’s when the real work begins. They would rip off the blubber with saws, spears and hooks to peel th whale in five foot wide tapestries of meat, blood and oil, yanking them up onto the deck to be boiled down. And separated belowdeck. When the whale was completely peeled the head was severed and brought upon deck, a hole was cut open and the cabin boy was thrown into the skull with a bucket to make sure not a drop of the spermaceti was wasted. Like literally tossing a child into the whale’s skull to scoop every last drop of the precious spermaceti. While thomas nickerson was doing that and trying not to puke unsuccessfully, the rest of the crew chopped the sheets of blubber into 1 by 1 strips that go boiled in copper trying pots to extract the oil. The more seasoned sailors would take the bits and pieces that wouldn’t turn into oil and just fucking chow down on em, partially to show dominance, partially to skip eating the revolting hardtack. The boiling process
Too revolting to describe. In all descriptions.
The revolting process could take up to three days, sharks attacking the corpse all the while. Finally things were looking up.
They looped around CAPE HORN, Say that 3 times fast if you’re not immature like me. Around the horn they saw some penguins so that’s nice. A few whales later they reach the western coast of south america and meet up with a few other whalers in a popular resting spot. This was late october where they met another whaleship captain whose boat had sunk and he was stuck in south america. He was shitfaced all the time and seemed to be doing plenty fine in south america. He told pollard and the mates about the legendary offshore ground. A part of the deep ocean where all the whales chilled out far from shore where you could fill a two year whale oil quota in a week. After some debate they decided to head for this legendary stretch of water in the fucking geometric center of the pacific. Like it’s almost impossible to get any farther from a mainland if you tried.
But it wasn’t without a little stop after they resupplied in south america. The essex sent it’s crew onto hood island of the galapagos. And this shit is just depressingly funny and sad. Turtle appreciators skip ahead here. SO they land at hood island of the galapagos to harvest some tortoises. They had slow metabolism, so they didn’t need a lot of food to keep on the boat. So they have 21 people, close to thirty hogs, and a fuckton of tortiseses. They would scoop these guys up, probably 80 plus years old to throw on the boat. They collected 180 of these fuckers. For slaughter. They’re just chilling. Darwins tortoises evolved precisely for each island.
ENTER THOMAS CHAPPEL, one of the natucketer boatsteerers, who brought a tinderbox onto the island.
Just prank
Killed thousands,
To this day a wasteland
200 years later.
Fast forward to the disaster site. 1000 fucking miles west of the galapagos. And they’re already 600 miles offshore. Again you can’t really get farther from a true shore than these guys. And bam it’s time to hunt more whales so they send out the boats and owne chase’s boat gets slapped by a tail immediately so they have to return to the essex. When they get back to the essex they see a fucking 85 foot bull sperm whale headed straight for them. It’s unclear why it did this, was it divine intervention? Was it sledge hammers slamming in repair that looked like a mate? Some other evil posession of that monstrous whale? We dont know. It hit the essex at maximum speed and caved in many of the planks in the hold water began to rush in and the essex began to tilt towards the widening hole. It knocked the crew into the air and holy fuck did it set them up for one of the most evil survival tales in human history. Chase, thought about stabbing the monstrous whale that had struck them but, hesitated thinking that the whale might destroy the rudder in a spasm upon being struck with a harpoon. He probably should have taken the shot due to what happened next. The whale swam in a circle and hit the boat again. A deathblow. The essex was irreparable after that. The whaleboats saw the carnage and the essex flip over, and returned to the main ship despite being surrounded by money whales.
Water was filling up the holds, the ship was beyond saving, all thoughts of financiers went out the window. It was a game of pure survival. The whale turn around and struck again. Slamming into the already weakened and rotten, 20 something year old Essex. That was all it took the ship was beyond all hope. The hold was filling with water, whale oil was lighting on fire on the surface of the water for purely dramatic effect. The people still out in the whaleboats headed towards the wreck, to see what the could salvage. And it was then that one of the black sailors saved the whole enterprise. Diving into the sinking ship as it filled with water, william bond managed to retrieve atlases and compasses rom the captains and first mate’s quarters, without these naviagational aids, literally every soul on board would have been lost to the sea. This episode is dedicated to my man billy bonds, without which, I wouldn’t have a show, but just a grim footnote in the annals of history. And unfortunately that’s where I gotta leave ya. The ship is sinking, hope is nearly lost, they’re almost 2000 miles from the shore, and well over 5000 miles from home in nantucket. I hate to do this but that’s where I’m gonna leave you this week, Pollard, chase, joy and friends watching as a whale tears their only hope of getting home asunder, something altogether unheard of until this point in history. It’s gonna be late when I finish editing this so expect show notes tomorrow. As this is our first true sequential series let me know what you think at nightmarenow.com I love that you’re here and I can’t wait for you to tune in next week for the next stage in the journey and tragedy of the whaleship essex. We’ll get back to shorter night bites now but I wanted to try to push the envelope tonight with this series. I hope you like it and please tell your friends or reach out to me. Without listeners, I really don’t have a show so I love to hear from you, and sharing means a lot. I’d say sweet dream but we all know it’s only gonna be nightmares now. Tune in next week for part two to see the crew face hardship, cannibalism, pshyological damgae and maybe someone making it hom despite all odds!