In the Heart of the Sea (17 page)

After ten days of eating only bread, the men greedily attacked the tortoise, their teeth ripping the succulent flesh as warm juice ran down their salt-encrusted faces. Their bodies' instinctive need for nutrition led them irresistibly to the tortoise's vitamin-rich heart and liver. Chase dubbed it “an unspeakably fine repast.”

Their hunger was so voracious that once they began to eat, they found it difficult to stop. An average-sized tortoise would have provided each man with about three pounds of meat, one pound of fat, and at least half a cup of blood, together worth more than 4,500 calories-equivalent to a large Thanksgiving dinner. This would have been a tremendous amount of food to introduce into the shrunken stomach of a person who had only eaten a total of four pounds of bread over the last ten days. The men's dehydrated condition would have also made it difficult for their stomachs to generate the digestive juices required to handle the large amount of food. But neither Chase nor Nickerson speaks of saving any of the cooked tortoise for a later day. For these starved men, this was one gratification no one was willing to delay. “ [O]our bodies were considerably recruited,” Chase wrote, “and I felt

my spirits nowmuch higher than they had been at anytime before.” Instead of limiting each whaleboat to two live tortoises, they now realized, they should have butchered and cooked the meat of every animal they found on the wreck.

For the first time in several days, the sky was clear enough for a noon observation. Pollard's sight indicated that they were approaching latitude 8 ° south. Since leaving the wreck on November 22, they had traveled almost five hundred miles, putting them slightly ahead of schedule-at least in terms of distance sailed over the water. That evening, with the bones and charred carapace of the tortoise littering the boat's bilge, Richard Peterson once again led the men in prayer.

For the next three days, the weather remained mild and clear. The wind shifted to the north, allowing them to shape their course toward Peru. Their stomachs full, they dared to believe that “our situation was not at that moment... so comfortless as we had been led at first to consider.” Nickerson noticed “a degree of repose and carelessness, scarcely to be looked for amid persons in our forlorn and hopeless situation.”

Only one thing lay between them and “a momentary forgetfulness of our actual situation”-a ferocious, unbearable thirst. Chase reported that even after consuming the tortoise and its blood, they still yearned for a long, cool drink of water: “[H] ad it not been for the pains which that gave us, we should have tasted, during this spell of fine weather, a species of enjoyment.”

On Sunday, December 3, they ate the last of their damaged bread. For the men in Chase's boat, it was a turning point. At first they didn't notice the change, but with each succeeding day of eating unspoiled hardtack, “the moisture began to collect in our mouths and the parching fever of the palate imperceptibly left it.” They were still seriously dehydrated, and becoming only more so, but no longer were they introducing excessive amounts of salt into their bodies.

That evening, after the men in Chase's boat had conducted what Nickerson called “our usual prayer meeting,” clouds moved in, cutting them off from the starlight. At around ten o'clock, Chase and Pollard lost track of Joy's boat. Its disappearance was so sudden that Nickerson feared “something had destroyed them.” Almost immediately, Chase hove to and raised a lantern to the masthead as the rest of his crew scanned the darkness for some sign of the second mate's boat. About a quarter of a mile to leeward, they spotted a small light flickering in the gloom. It proved to be Joy's answering signal. All three boats were once again accounted for.

Two nights later, it was Chase's turn to become separated from the others. Instead of lighting a lantern, the first mate fired his pistol. Soon after, Pollard and Joy appeared out of the darkness to windward. 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.”

On December 8, the seventeenth day, the wind increased to a full gale. Forty-to fifty-knot gusts lashed the men with rain. It was the most wind they'd experienced so far, and after gradually shortening sail all night, each boat-crew found it necessary to lower its masts. The waves were huge, the giant crests atomized into foam by the shrieking wind. Despite the horrendous conditions, the men attempted to collect rainwater in the folds of their sails. They soon discovered that the sailcloth was even more permeated with salt than their damaged provisions had been, and the water proved as salty as seawater.

The boats became unmanageable in the immense waves. “The sea rose to a fearful height,” Chase remembered, “and every wave that came looked as if it must be the last that would be necessary for our destruction.” There was nothing for the men to do but lie down in the bottoms of their fragile vessels and “await the approaching issue with firmness and resignation.”

Gale-force winds in the open ocean can create waves of up to forty feet. But the mountainous size of the waves actually worked to the men's advantage. The whaleboats flicked over the crests, then wallowed in the troughs, temporarily protected from the wind. The vertical walls of water looming on either side were a terrifying sight, but not once did a wave crash down and swamp a boat.

The intense darkness of the night was, according to Nickerson, “past conception to those who have not witnessed the same.” Making the blackness all the more horrible were flashes of lightning that seemed to envelop the boats in crackling sheets of fire.

By noon of the following day, the wind had moderated enough that the men dared to poke their heads above the raised gunwales of the boats. Incredibly, all three boats were still within sight of one another. “To an overruling Providence alone must be attributed our salvation from the horrors of that terrible night,” Chase wrote. “It can be accounted for in no other way: that a speck of substance, like that which we were1, before the driving terrors of the tempest, could have been conducted safely through it.”

None of the men had slept all night. All of them had expected to die. When Chase ordered his crew to raise the masts and set sail, they resisted. “My companions... were dispirited and broken down to such a degree,” the first mate remembered, “as to appear to want some more powerful stimulus than the fears of death to enable them to do their duty.”

But Chase was unrelenting. “By great exertions,” he induced them to restep the masts and set a double-reefed mainsail and jib, even though dawn had not yet arrived. All three boats were back to sailing again when “the sun rose and showed the disconsolate faces of our companions once more to each other.”

As they sailed to the south, the large waves left over from the storm pummeled the boats, opening up their seams even wider. The constant bailing had become “an extremely irksome and laborious task” for these starved and dehydrated men. Their noon observation on Saturday, December 9, put them at latitude 17°40' south. In their seventeen days at sea, they had stayed ahead-justbarely-of their target of a degree of latitude a day, traveling close to 1,100 nautical miles. However, because of the easterly direction of the winds, they were now farther from South America than when they'd started.

They had close to three thousand miles left to go if they were to reach their destination. They were starving and thirsty. Their boats were barely holding together. But there was a way out.

On December 9, well into their third week in the open boats, they drew abreast of the Society Islands. If they hadheaded west, sailing along latitude 17 ° south, they would have reached Tahiti, perhaps in as little as a week. There were islands in the Tuamotu Archipelago that they might have sighted in less than half that time. They would have also been sailing with the wind and waves, easing the strain on the boats.

However, despite the numerous setbacks they had already faced, despite the extremity of their sufferings, Pollard, Chase, and Joy pushed on with the original plan. Nickerson could not understand why. “I can only say there was gross ignorance or a great oversight somewhere, which cost many... fine seamen their lives.” The men's sufferings only narrowed and intensified their focus. It was “up the coast” or nothing.

FOUR YEARS earlier, in 1816, the French ship Medusa was wrecked on a shoal well off the coast of west Africa. The vessel was transporting settlers to the colony of Senegal, and it soon became apparent that there were not enough boats to go around. The crew constructed a crude raft from the ship's timbers. Initially the captain and the rest of the officers, who had all taken to the boats, started towing the raft. Before long, however, they decided to cut the tow rope and abandon the passengers to their fate. With only a few casks of wine to share among more than 150 people, the raft quickly became a chaotic hell ship. Vicious fighting broke out between a faction of alcohol-crazed soldiers and some more levelheaded but equally desperate settlers. Two weeks later, when the brig Argus sighted the raft, only fifteen people were left alive.

The story of the Medusa became a worldwide sensation. Two of the survivors penned an account that inspired a monumental painting by Theodore Gericault. In 1818 the narrative was translated into English and became a best-seller. Whether or not they had heard of the Medusa, the men of the Essex were all too aware of what might happen if sufficient discipline was not maintained.

At eleven o'clock on the night of December 9, the seventeenth night since leaving the wreck, Pollard's boat vanished in the darkness. The men on the other two boats cried out for their lost companions, but there was no response. Chase and Joy discussed what to do next.

Both were well aware of what they should do. As had been agreed the last time one of the hoats had become separated, they were to keep on sailing and make no attempt to find the missing crew. “We, however, concluded on this occasion to make a small effort,” Chase remembered, “which, if it did not immediately prove the means of restoring the lost boat, we would discontinue, and again make sail.”

So Chase and Joy lowered their sails and waited. The minutes stretched on, and Chase loaded his pistol and fired. Nothing. After a full hour of bobbing in the dark, the two boat-crews reluctantly set sail, assuming they would never again see their captain and his men.

Early the next morning, someone saw a sail, two miles to the leeward. Chase and Joy immediately altered course, and soon all three crews were reunited. Once again, their destinies were, in Chase's words, “involuntarily linked together.”

It was on this day, the eighteenth since leaving the wreck, that the men's thirst and hunger reached a new, agonizing level. Even the stoic Chase was tempted “to violate our resolution, and satisfy, for once, the hard yearnings of nature from our stock.” Raiding their stores, however, would be a death sentence: “[A] little reflection served to convince us of the imprudence and unmanliness of the measure, and it was abandoned with a sort of melancholy effort of satisfaction.”

Just to make sure that no one was tempted to steal any of the bread, Chase transferred the provisions to his sea chest. Whenever he slept, he made sure to have an arm or a leg draped across it. He also kept the loaded pistol at his side. For a man from the Quaker island of Nantucket, it was an unusual display of free. Nickerson's impression was that “nothing but violence to his person” would have induced the first mate to surrender the provisions. Chase decided that if anyone should object to his method of rationing, he would immediately divide up the hardtack into equal portions and distribute it among the men. If it came down to giving up his own stock, he was “resolved to make the consequences of it fatal.”

That afternoon, a school of flying fish surrounded the three whaleboats. Four of the fish hit the sails of Chase's boat. One fell at the first mate's feet and, instinctively, he devoured it whole, scales and all. As the rest of the crew scrambled for the other three fish, Chase found himself inclined to laugh for the first time since the sinking of the Essex at “the ludicrous and almost desperate efforts of my five companions, who each sought to get a fish.” The first mate might insist on the disciplined sharing of the bread and water, but a different standard prevailed when it came to windfalls such as flying fish-then, it was every man for himself.

The next day the wind dropped to almost nothing, and Chase proposed that they eat their second tortoise. As had happened eleven days earlier, the “luxuriant repast... invigorated our bodies, and gave a fresh flow to our spirits.” Over the next three days, the wind remained light. The temperature climbed and the men languished beneath a cloudless sky. “[H]aving no way of screening ourselves from [the sun's] piercing rays,” Nickerson wrote, “our suffering became most intolerable as our short allowance of water was barely enough to support life.”

On Wednesday, December 13, the wind sprang out of an unexpected direction-the north-bringing with it “a most welcome and unlocked for relief.” It was now possible to steer directly for South America. Their noon observation revealed that they had barely reached latitude 21° south, putting them at least five degrees (or three hundred nautical miles) from the band of light variable winds that they hoped would propel them east. But the officers chose to believe that they had “run out of the trade-winds, and had got into the variables, and should, in all probability, reach the land many days sooner than we expected.”