Whaleship Essex

The whaling ship Essex left Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1819 on a two-and-a-half-year voyage in the whaling grounds of the South Pacific to hunt sperm whales. On November 20 1819, the Essex was struck by a sperm whale and sunk, 2,000 miles (3,700 km) off South America. The twenty sailors set out in three small whaleboats, with wholly inadequate supplies of food and water.

Excessive sodium in the sailors’ diets and malnutrition led to diarrhea, blackouts, enfeeblement, boils, edema, and magnesium deficiency which caused bizarre and violent behavior. Furthermore, sailors suffered withdrawal from severe tobacco addiction. As conditions worsened the sailors resorted to drinking their own urine, stealing and mismanaging their food. Faced with no more rations, sailors were forced to eat those sailors who had died in the boats. By the time the last of the eight survivors were rescued on 5 April, 1821, seven sailors had been eaten.

The first mate, Owen Chase, wrote an account of the disaster, the Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex; this was used by Herman Melville as the one of the inspirations for his novel Moby-Dick. The cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson, wrote another account, not published until 1984.

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