In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (National Book Award Winner)

by Nathaniel Philbrick

That night the officers agreed that if they should ever become separated again, no action would be taken to reassemble the convoy. Too much time was being lost trying to keep the boats together. Besides, if one of the boats either capsized or became unrepairable, there was little the other crews could do. All three boats were already overloaded, and to add any more men would result in the eventual deaths of all of them. The prospect of beating away the helpless crew of another boat with their oars was awful to contemplate, even if they all realized that each boat should go it alone. However, so strong was what Chase called “the extraordinary interest which we felt in each other’s company” that none of them would consider voluntarily separating. This “desperate instinct” persisted to such a point that, even in the midst of conditions that made simply staying afloat a full-time occupation, they “continued to cling to each other with a strong and involuntary impulse.”