In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

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In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

Editorial Review

The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents-including a long-lost account written by the ship's cabin boy-and penetrating details about whaling and the Nantucket community to reveal the chilling events surrounding this epic maritime disaster. An intense and mesmerizing read, In the Heart of the Sea is a monumental work of history forever placing the Essex tragedy in the American historical canon.

The appeal of Dava Sobel's Longitude was, in part, that it illuminated a little-known piece of history through a series of captivating incidents and engaging personalities. Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea is certainly cast from the same mold, examining the 19th-century Pacific whaling industry through the arc of the sinking of the whaleship Essex by a boisterous sperm whale. The story that inspired Herman Melville's classic Moby-Dick has a lot going for it--derring-do, cannibalism, rescue--and Philbrick proves an amiable and well-informed narrator, providing both context and detail. We learn about the importance and mechanics of blubber production--a vital source of oil--and we get the nuts and bolts of harpooning and life aboard whalers. We are spared neither the nitty-gritty of open boats nor the sucking of human bones dry.

By sticking to the tried and tested Longitude formula, Philbrick has missed a slight trick or two. The epicenter of the whaling industry was Nantucket, a small island off Cape Cod; most of the whales were in the Pacific, necessitating a huge journey around the southernmost tip of South America. We never learn why no one ever tried to create an alternative whaling capital somewhere nearer. Similarly, Philbrick tells us that the story of the Essex was well known to Americans for decades, but he never explores how such legends fade from our consciousness. Philbrick would no doubt reply that such questions were beyond his remit, and you can't exactly accuse him of skimping on his research. By any standard, 50 pages of footnotes impress, though he wears his learning lightly. He doesn't get bogged down in turgid detail, and his narrative rattles along at a nice pace. When the storyline is as good as this, you can't really ask for more. --John Crace, Amazon.co.uk

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
• Just Amazing
  This is one of those books that, as you read it you say to yourself "why didn't I know about this before, and why don't people talk about it more?" One of my favorite books ever.
• Great white whale sinks ship . . . . who'd believe that story?
  Real-life whaling disaster that Melville borrowed as the basis for Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Modern Library Classics) moves crisply in Philbrick's matter-of-fact style that emphasizes the horror of the story. The Essex left Nantucket in 1819 on a typically 2 to 3-year whaling tour, then sank when it was rammed by a giant sperm whale--twice! This unprecedented attack left the 20 whalers stunned and stranded 1,500 miles from land in the middle of the Pacific.
  Philbrick relies on the accounts of several... more info
• horrifying
  Well written and horrifying account of the Essex. I am from Boston and I was not aware of the story. Found the book in a store on Nantucket a over the summer. I am glad I remembered to order it when I came home from vaca. If your looking for an adventure story, without a Disney ending,,,,then this book is for you.
• I was cheering for the whales
  A very good story, but as the whalers were slaughtering every whale in sight and dragging the giant Galapagos turtles into their mess halls for dinner, I was cheering for the whales.

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