In the Heart of the Sea (30 page)

Moby-Dick proved to be both a critical and financial disappointment, and in 1852, a year after its publication, Melville finally visited Nantucket. He traveled to the island in July with his father-in-law, Justice Lemuel Shaw, the same judge who had granted Owen Chase's divorce twelve years earlier. Like Emerson before him, it wasn't Chase, now a retired whaling captain living off the income from his investments, whom Melville sought out, but rather George Pollard, the lowly night watchman.

Melville appears to have stayed at the Ocean House, on the corner of Centre and Broad Streets, diagonally across from the home in which

George and Mary Pollard had been living for decades. Late in life Melville wrote of the Essex's captain: “To the islanders he was a nobody-to me, the most impressive man, tho' wholly unassuming even humble-that I ever encountered.”

In the years to come, Melville's professional life as a novelist would go the way of Pollard's whaling career. Without a readership for his books, the author of Moby-Dick was forced to take a job as a customs inspector on the wharves of New York City. Although he ceased writing novels, he continued to write poetry, in particular a long, dark poem called Clarel, in which there is a character based on Pollard. After two disastrous voyages, the former captain becomes “A night patrolman on the quay / Watching the bales till morning hour / Through fair and foul.” Melville felt a powerful kinship with the captain of the Essex, and his description of the old seaman is based as much upon himself as it is on the man he met on the streets of Nantucket:

Never he smiled;

Call him, and he would come; not sour In spirit, but meek and reconciled: Patient he was, he none withstood; Oft on some secret thing would brood.

By 1835, when Obed Macy published, with the assistance of William Coffin, Jr., his History of Nantucket, New Bedford had eclipsed the island as America's leading whaling port. The Nantucket Bar-a mere nuisance in the early days of the Pacific whale fishery-had developed into a major obstacle to prosperity. The whaleships had become so large that they could no longer cross the Bar without being almost completely unloaded by lighters-a time-consuming and expensive process. In 1842, Peter Folger Ewer designed and built two 135-foot “camels”-giant wooden water wings that formed a floating dry dock capable of carrying a fully loaded whaleship across the Bar. The fact remained, however, that New Bedford's deep-water harbor gave the port an unassailable advantage, as did its nearness to the newly emerging railroad system, on which increasing numbers of merchants shipped their oil to market.

But Nantucketers also had themselves to blame for the dramatic downturn the whaling business would take on the island in the 1840s. As whalemen from New Bedford, New London, and Sag Harbor opened up new whaling grounds in the North Pacific, Nantucketers stuck stubbornly to the long-since depleted grounds that had served them so well in past decades.

There were also problems at home. Quakerism, once the driving cultural and spiritual force of the community, fractured into several squabbling sects. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, there were more meetinghouses than ever on the island, yet the total number of Quakers on Nantucket dwindled with each passing year. As the strictures of Quakerism relaxed, Nantucketers were free to display the wealth they had once felt obliged to conceal. Main Street became lined with elegant brick estates and giant clapboard Greek Revival mansions-monuments to the riches islanders had, in the words of Herman Melville, “harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea.” Even though the annual return of oil had been steadily diminishing for a number of years, there was little visible reason for concern on the streets of Nantucket in the early summer of 1846. Then, at eleven o'clock on a hot July night, someone shouted the dreaded word “Fire!”

It had been one of the driest summers on record. The wooden buildings were as parched as tinder. In a few short minutes, the flames had spread from a hat factory on Main Street to an adjoining structure. At this time Nantucket was without a municipal fire department, relying instead on privately organized fire companies. As the fire made its way up Main Street with alarming rapidity, individual homeowners started bidding for the fire companies' services so as to protect their own houses. Instead of working together as a coordinated unit, the companies split off in different directions, allowing the blaze to build into an uncontrollable conflagration.

The immense upward flow of heat created wind currents that rushed through the narrow streets, spreading the fire in all directions. Chunks of burning debris flew into the air and landed on houses that had been assumed safe. In an attempt to contain the blaze, the town's fire wardens dynamited houses, the explosions adding to the terrifying confusion of the night. Owen Chase's Orange Street home was far enough south to escape the fire, but Pollard's house on Centre Street was directly in its path. Miraculously, the tornado-like convection currents turned the fire east, toward the harbor, before it reached the night watchman's house. Pollard's residence survived, even though all the houses on the east side of the street were destroyed.

Soon the fire reached the waterfront. Oil warehouses billowed with black smoke, then erupted into flame. As the casks burst, a river of liquid fire poured across the wharves and into the harbor. One fire company had run its engine into the shallows of the anchorage and was pumping seawater onto the wharves. The men belatedly realized that a creeping slick of oil had surrounded them in fire. Their only option was to dive underwater and swim for their lives. Their wooden fire engine was destroyed, but all the men made it to safety.

By the next morning, more than a third of the town-and almost all the commercial district-was a charred wasteland. But it was the waterfront that had suffered the most. The sperm oil had burned so fiercely that not even cinders remained. The leviathan, it was said, had finally achieved his revenge.

The town was quickly rebuilt, this time largely in brick. Nantucketers attempted to reassure themselves that the disturbing dip in the whaling business was only temporary. Then, just two years later, in 1848, came the discovery of gold in California. Hundreds of Nantucketers surrendered to the lure of easy wealth in the West. Abandoning careers as whalemen, they shipped out as passengers bound for San Francisco, packed into the same ships in which they had once pursued the mighty sperm whale. The Golden Gate became the burial ground of countless Nantucketwhaleships, abandoned by their crews and left to rot on the mudflats.

Long before Edwin Drake struck oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, Nantucket's economic fate had been determined. Over the next twenty years, the island's population would shrink from ten thousand to three thousand. “Nantucket now has a 'body-o'-death' appearance such as few New England towns possess,” one visitor wrote. “The houses stand around in faded gentility style-the inhabitants have a dreamy look, as though they live in the memories of the past.” Even though whaling would continue out of New Bedford into the 1920s, the island whose name had once been synonymous with the fishery had ceased to be an active whaling port only forty years after the departure of tlie Essex. On November 16,1869, Nantucket's last whaling vessel, the Oak, left the harbor, never to return.

The world's sperm-whale population proved remarkably resilient in the face of what Melville called “so remorseless a havoc.” It is estimated that the Nantucketers and their Yankee whale-killing brethren harvested more than 225,000 sperm whales between 1804 and 1876. In 1837, the best year in the century for killing whales, 6,767 sperm whales were taken by American whalemen. (As a disturbing point of comparison, in 1964,”the peak year of modern whaling, 29,255 sperm whales were killed.) Some researchers believe that by the 1860s whalemen may have reduced the world's sperm-whale population by as much as 75 percent; others claim that it was diminished by only 8 to 18 percent. Whatever figure is closer to the truth, sperm whales have done better than other large cetaceans hunted by man. Today there are between one and a half to two million sperm whales, making them the most abundant of the world's great whales.

As late as 1845, whalemen were confident that the sperm whale stocks were in no danger of diminishing. They did comment, however, on how the behavior of the whales had changed. “They have indeed become wilder,” one observer wrote, “or as some of the whalers express it, 'more scary,' and, in consequence, not so easy to capture.” Like the whale that had attacked the Essex, an increasing number of sperm whales were fighting back.

In 1835 the crew of the English whaleship Pusie Hall were forced into full retreat by what they termed a “fighting whale.” After driving away four whaleboats, the whale pursued them back to the ship. The men hurled several lances at the whale “before it could be induced to retire.” In 1836, the Lydia, a Nantucket whaleship, was struck and sunk by a sperm whale, as was the Two Generals a few years later. In 1850, the Pocahontas, out of Martha's Vineyard, was rammed by a whale but was able to reach port for repairs. Then, in 1851, the year that Moby-Dick was published, a whaleship was attacked by a sperm whale in the same waters where the Essex had been sunk thirty-one years before.

The Ann Alexander, a whaleship out of New Bedford, was under the command of one of the fishiest captains in the Pacific, John DeBlois. In a letter to the ship's owner, DeBlois boasted that he had succeeded in killing every whale he had ever fastened to. But in August of 1851, just to the south of the equator and about five hundred miles east of the Galapagos, Captain DeBlois met his match.

It was a large solitary bull, what DeBlois called “a noble fellow!” Two boats were lowered, and the fight was on. Almost immediately the whale rushed after the mate's boat. “[I]n an instant [the boat] was crushed like so much paper in his mighty jaws,” DeBlois wrote. After rescuing the first mate's crew, DeBlois was joined by the second mate in another whaleboat. They divided the men among them and resumed the chase. Almost immediately, however, the whale attacked the mate's boat and immediately destroyed it. DeBlois was forced to stop the pursuit, pick up the scattered crew, and return to the Ann Alexander.

By this point, DeBlois recounted, “my blood was up, and I was fully determined to have that whale, cost what it might.” As he stood at the ship's bow with a lance in his hand, the captain told the helmsman whereto steer. The whale was, DeBlois wrote, an “artful beast,” allowing them to gain, only to hurry ahead before the captain could throw his weapon.

Suddenly the whale sank, then turned and surfaced only yards in front of the ship. DeBlois hurled the lance, but it was too late. The whale's massive head struck the bow of the ship, knocking DeBlois off his feet. Convinced that the Ann Alexander had been stove, he ran below to check for damage, but all proved tight.

DeBlois ordered his men to lower another boat. The mate objected, insisting that to do so would be suicide. Since it was already close to dusk, DeBlois reluctantly decided to wait until morning. “Just as I gave these orders,” the captain remembered, “I caught a glimpse of a shadow as it seemed to me.” It was the whale hurtling through the water toward the Ann Alexander. It struck the ship “a terrible blow,” DeBlois wrote, “that shook her from stem to stern.”

Even before he went below to inspect the damage, he could hear water pouring into the hold. The captain rushed to his cabin to get the navigational instruments they would need in the whaleboats. As the mates readied the two remaining boats, DeBlois went below one more time, but the cabin was so full of water that he was forced to swim to safety. By the time he returned to the deck, both whaleboats had rowed clear of the ship. He leaped from the railing and swam to the mate's boat.

Almost immediately his men began, in DeBlois's words, “[to] upbraid me, saying, '0 Captain, you ran too much risk of our lives!'

“'Men,' I replied, 'for God's sake, don't find fault with me! You were as anxious as I to catch that whale, and I hadn't the least idea that anything like this would happen.'“

The next morning they returned to the wreck. As soon as DeBlois scrambled up the side, he saw “the prints of the [whale's] teeth on the copper... The hole was just the size of the whale's head.” As DeBlois cut away the masts to right the ship, the ship's bell continued to clang with the rhythmic heave of the sea. “[A] more mournful sound never fell on my ears,” he remembered. “It was as though it was tolling for our deaths.”

The ship was almost completely submerged, and the waves broke over the captain's head. Eventually he was joined by the mate, and the two of them attempted to cut through the deck and locate some provisions and fresh water. By noon, about half the crew of twenty-four had found the courage to climb aboard the wreck and search for food. Several of the men had begun to grumble that they should immediately set sail for the Marquesas, two thousand miles to the west. DeBlois told the crew to assemble at the rail of the ship, where he asked “if they wanted me to advise them.” Amajority of the men nodded their heads. Although he knew it wasn't what they wanted to hear, he told them that there weren't enough provisions to reach the Marquesas. Instead, they should sail their boats (which possessed centerboards) north toward the equator, where they might be spotted by a ship bound for California. Begrudgingly, the men agreed. Before they left, DeBlois took up a'nail and scratched a message into the ship's taffrail: “Save us-we poor souls have gone in two boats to the north on the wind.”

The mate had twelve men in his boat, the captain thirteen. The crew wanted to stay together, but once again DeBlois overruled them. “'No' says I, 'my object is to have one boat go ahead, if it sails faster. and the other follow in the same course, so that if the first boat is picked up, say, a hundred miles ahead, their rescuers can bear down to the other boat.'

“Our parting was a solemn sight,” he wrote, “if ever there was one in this world. We never expected to meet again on earth, and the strong men who had braved all sorts of dangers, broke down and wept like children.” The mate's boat soon surged ahead. It wasn't long before DeBlois's men “became clamorous for food.” They had had nothing to eat or drink for twenty-four hours. But their captain felt it was too early to begin eating what little food they had. “My mind was filled with all the stories I had ever heard of shipwrecks,” he remembered, “where the famishing men had been often driven to eating their shipmates' bodies.” He thought, of course, of the Essex and how some of the men had drawn lots. “Pictures of this sort were enough to drive one wild,” he wrote, “when he felt that the same ordeal was before him.”