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

by Nathaniel Philbrick

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.

One example of the claims made for dehydration and starvation as a “natural and quite tolerable” way to die can be found on the Web site http://www.asap-care.com/fluids.htm: “Dehydration and starvation have proven to be very tolerable while dying. This is easy to understand because people have been dying comfortably for thousands of years without artificial tube feedings and fluid supports. . . . [These] are natural events that should be allowed to occur when death is imminent, not fought relentlessly and avoided at any and all costs.”