This section aims to discuss the perception of the Essex and its survivors in the eyes of the Nantucket community that they returned to. It examines the lives of the surviving shipmates after their return to Nantucket.
Ideas of “Survival Cannibalism”
In most cases, cannibalism is an unacceptable and immoral practice that is heavily frowned upon and often punished, however the idea of survival cannibalism is different. Survival cannibalism is exactly what it sounds like, it is cannibalism in a dire situation that is forced out of necessity to live. Survival cannibalism is not based on a choice or a want, it is a case where if one doesn’t go against basic human morals and consume the flesh of another person, they will starve and die themselves. It is not an easy decision to make despite it often being the only decision a person can make that won’t result in their death. The Essex sailors did everything they could not to resort to cannibalism, but in the end survival would’ve been impossible without it. Pollard and Ramsdell, despite being found clutching the bones of their fellow sailors when being rescued, were let on board the Dauphin and fed1, showing that despite the evil of cannibalism, there was an acceptance among the maritime community that sometimes it was necessary in dire situations, and many would not refuse help to sailors who had been forced to partake in it .
Public Perception in Nantucket
News of the shipwreck reached Nantucket before the survivors did, and the idea of a deliberate whale attack, something previously unheard of, stunned the community. When the first survivors returned, they were greeted not with celebration, but with shock and disbelief of their survival, and a silent acceptance of some of the things they had to do in order to return. Specifically, the cannibalism that occurred as survivors ran out of normal rations and had to resort to eating their dead shipmates in order to survive. Before the return of the survivors to Nantucket, the town learned of the cannibalism that had occurred and many people cried openly in the streets upon hearing about these horrors2.
For the families of the survivors, their return was joyous, and the means by which the men survived were given very little thought compared to the fact that their family member was alive3. For the rest of the community however, the occasion was not joyous, and although the survivors were accepted back into the community, there was certainly a sense of tension among the community about the event, and the lengths that the survivors had been forced to go to. When Captain George Pollard became the last survivor to return to Nantucket, 1,500 residents rushed to the docks. However, when Pollard stepped off the ship he was met with nothing but complete silence4.
One of the matters that Pollard had to attend to in Nantucket was the delivery of the final message of Owen Coffin to his mother and Pollard’s aunt Nancy Bunker Coffin. Nancy grew frantic upon hearing the events surrounding Owen’s death, particularly the fact that Owen was the only case of a crewmember being killed off for the sake of cannibalization, despite the idea that the process to pick Owen compared to another shipmate was random, fair, and previously agreed upon by all partaking parties. Nancy never forgave Captain Pollard after hearing about this, however the rest of the community was more understanding of the shipmates actions5. Most of the community had either been to sea or had a family member go to sea, and because of this there was an acceptance of the inherent dangers that came with sea travel, as well as the otherwise immoral behaviors that in this case were necessary for survival6.
Aftermath of the Surviving Crew
George Pollard was made captain of the whaling ship Two Brothers and just a few months after his return to Nantucket, he left on another whaling expedition in November 1821 along with the ship Martha. Both ships were meant to help one another in case of trouble. Among his crew were Thomas Nickerson and Charles Ramsdell, two other surviving members of the Essex crew. In February 1823, Martha disappeared from view, and while searching, Pollard and the Two Brothers lost track of their latitude, causing the ship to crash into rocks off of the French Frigate Shoals, sinking the vessel within 20 minutes. The crew was shortly rescued by Martha, and this experience caused Pollard to end his whaling career saying “No [ship] owners will ever trust me with a whaler again, for all will say I am an unlucky man.7” After a brief stint on a merchant ship, Pollard removed himself from the seafaring community and transitioned between jobs as a grocer, a constable, and a night watchman for Nantucket until his death in 18708.
“No [ship] owners will ever trust me with a whaler again, for all will say I am an unlucky man.”
Thomas Nickerson worked as a mate on whaling and cargo ships during the 1830s, eventually retiring to Brooklyn where he wrote his own account of the events of the Essex. He returned to Nantucket with his wife in the 1870s and operated a boarding house until his death in 188310.
Charles Ramsdell continued whaling, eventually rising to captain on the ship Lydia operating out of Salem. He died in 186611.
Benjamin Lawrence also continued working on whaling ships and also became captain of a ship, the Nantucket-based Dromo which he captained on three voyages from 1838-1841. After whaling he became a keeper at a Nantucket asylum, and he farmed and fished from his Nantucket home where he lived with his wife and their six children until his death in 187912.
After writing the Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex of Nantucket (discussed in the Maritime Literature section), Owen Chase spent two more decades in the whaling community, eventually becoming an owner of the Charles Carroll based in Nantucket. He retired to Nantucket in 1940, and was married four times, one of which was to the widowed wife of Essex second mate Matthew Joy, who did not survive the events of the Essex. Near the end of his life he grew insane and would hoard food in his attic, likely due to the trauma of having no food and the decisions which this issue forced him to make. He died in 186913.
Footnotes
- Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea, xii-xiii ↩︎
- Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea, 198. ↩︎
- Chase, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex, of Nantucket; Which Was Attacked and Finally Destroyed by a Large Spermaceti Whale, in the Pacific Ocean; with an Account of the Unparalleled Sufferings of the Captain and Crew during a Space of Ninety-Three Days at Sea, in Open Boats, in the Years 1819 and 1820. By Owen Chase of Nantucket, First Mate of Said Vessel, 127-128
↩︎ - “The diary of Obed Macy, Winter and Spring 1821,” Third Volume Collection 96 in Nantucket Historical Association Archives. ↩︎
- Thomas Nickerson, “Nickerson’s Letter to Lewis,” In The Loss of the Ship Essex Sunk by a Whale, Nathanial Philbrick and Thomas Philbrick eds. (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 181- 182. ↩︎
- Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea, 202. ↩︎
- Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, “Excerpts from Tyerman and Bennet’s Journal,” In The Loss of the Ship Essex Sunk by a Whale, Nathanial Philbrick and Thomas Philbrick eds. (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 199 ↩︎
- “Aftermath – Stove by a Whale.” Stove by a Whale, 16 Nov. 2020, essex.nha.org/the-aftermath/. ↩︎
- Wikimedia Commons [[File:French Frigate Shoals map.png|French_Frigate_Shoals_map]] ↩︎
- “Aftermath – Stove by a Whale.” Stove by a Whale, 16 Nov. 2020, essex.nha.org/the-aftermath/. ↩︎
- “Aftermath – Stove by a Whale.” Stove by a Whale, 16 Nov. 2020, essex.nha.org/the-aftermath/. ↩︎
- “Aftermath – Stove by a Whale.” Stove by a Whale, 16 Nov. 2020, essex.nha.org/the-aftermath/. ↩︎
- “Aftermath – Stove by a Whale.” Stove by a Whale, 16 Nov. 2020, essex.nha.org/the-aftermath/. ↩︎