A WHALE OF A TALE…

…and a tale of a whale.  I just finished “In the Heart of the Sea” by Nathaniel Philbrick, an exhaustively researched account of the sinking of the Nantucket-based whaling ship Essex in 1820, the real-life inspiration for Herman Melville’s classic “Moby-Dick.”

The author paints his picture with a detailed brush. We learn much about the unique culture, racial mores, and economy of Nantucket in the early 19th Century, and great detail about whaling.  I had always thought the harpoons were what they killed the leviathans with, but we learn from Philbrick they were merely anchors for harpoon lines that brought the hunters’ boats close enough to stab the quarry with giant spears.  There are many enlightening tidbits about aquatic mammal biology and behavior, how starvation and dehydration affect the human body, and more than I wanted to know about cannibalism.

The whale that seems to have deliberately rammed the Essex was estimated to be 85 feet long and 80 tons. The author notes that sperm whales that size aren’t reported today, and theorizes that selective killing of the more profitable giant whales during this period had an effect on subsequent breeding.  However, he doesn’t think the size was exaggerated, noting that a sperm whale jawbone now in a whaling museum extrapolates to an 80-footer.

Its first strike rocked the ship violently enough to throw sailors off their feet and seriously damage the hull, though the damage might have been repairable.  But the second hit, from a fast running start, was a straight-on head butt which, all survivors confirmed, drove the 238-ton vessel backward and caved in a major portion of the bow.  The monster whale swam off, leaving the ship mortally wounded.

All 20 of the crew got off the ship in one piece, salvaging some provisions, guns, and navigation equipment before the Essex went under. In “Moby-Dick,” that was pretty much the climax of the novel, and sole survivor Ishmael’s rescue was sort of a postscript. However, the aftermath of the Essex’s sinking is really the heart of “In the Heart of the Sea.” In more than three months on the ocean in those little whaling boats, a dozen men died, most winding up in the bellies of the surviving eight.

There are lessons galore in this grim narrative of survival.  There are understandable navigation errors and choices which 20/20 hindsight shows to have been questionable, and in perspective, being led astray by GPS will never seem quite so bad again after reading this. There was also a lesson about hesitation and balancing competing harms: After the initial ramming, the first mate spotted the stunned whale at the stern of the ship, and had a perfect shot to kill it, the great lance in hand. However, he made the conscious decision not to, fearing that in its death throes the huge tail might tear the rudder off the ship.  He would later decide that spearing the beast would have been the lesser of two evils.

Damn. Now I gotta see the movie of the same name, which I hear was well made but so depressing it was not a success in the theaters.

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