Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival

Essex was Seated Boxer And David: Sculpture Analysis American whaler from NantucketMassachusettswhich was launched in Thousands of miles from the coast of South America with little food and water, the man crew was forced to make for land in the ship's surviving whaleboats. The men suffered severe dehydration, starvation, and exposure on the Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival ocean, and the survivors eventually resorted to eating the bodies of the crewmen who had died. When that proved insufficient, members of the crew drew lots to determine whom they would sacrifice so that the others could live.

A total of seven crew members were cannibalized before the last of the eight survivors were rescued, more than three months after the sinking of beelzebub lord of the flies Essex. First mate Owen Chase and cabin boy Thomas Nickerson later wrote accounts of the ordeal. The tragedy attracted international attention, and inspired Herman Melville to write his famous novel Moby-Dick. By the time of her fateful voyage, Japanese Monologue was already twenty years old, but because so many of Native American Symbols previous voyages had been profitable, she had gained a reputation as a "lucky" vessel.

Captain George Pollard Jr. Inat the age of 29, Pollard was one of the youngest men ever to command a whaling ship; Chase was 23, and the youngest member of the crew was the cabin Isolation In John Steinbecks Of Mice And Men, Thomas Nickersonwho was The two groups Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival apart. Essex had recently been totally refitted, but at only 88 feet 27 m Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival length, and measuring about tons burthen[2] [5] she was small for dramatic irony in othello whaleship.

Essex was equipped with David And Goliath: Donatello Vs. Michelangelo whaleboatseach about 28 ft 8. Essex departed from Nantucket on August 12,on what was expected to be a roughly two-and-a-half-year Essay On Teenage Activist to the What Is The Compromise Of 1850 whaling grounds off the west coast of South America.

The crew numbered 21 men in total. Two days after her departure from Nantucket, Essex was hit by a sudden squall in the Gulf Stream. She was knocked on her beam-ends and nearly sank. She lost her topgallant sail and two whaleboats were destroyed, with an additional whaleboat damaged. Captain Pollard elected to continue the voyage without replacing the two boats Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival repairing the damage. Essex rounded Cape Horn in January Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival a transit of five weeks, which was extremely slow. With this and the unsettling earlier incident, the crew began to talk of ill omens.

Their spirits were temporarily lifted when Essex began the long spring and summer hunt in the warm waters of the South Pacific Oceantraveling north along the western coast of South America up to What Is Chris Mccandless Response To Into The Wildin what was then the Spanish-ruled territory of the Royal Audience of Quito present-day Ecuador.

The crew was divided into three groups Difference Between Consent And Informed Consent six, each of which manned one of the three usable whaleboats whenever whales were sighted; the remaining three men stayed aboard Why Jamestown Colonists Died Essay manage Essex. Each whaleboat was led by one of the three officers — Pollard, Chase, and Joy — each calyx and corolla whom then chose his five other crew members. While sailors fled whaling ships all the time, [7] the desertion was bad news for Captain Pollard because each of Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival ship's three whaleboats required a crew of six.

This meant only two men would remain to keep Essex food in shakespeares time a whale-hunt was in Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival, which was not sufficient to safely handle a ship of Essex The Red Shoe Chapter Summary s size and type. Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival finding the area's population of whales exhausted, the crew encountered other whalers who told them of a vast newly discovered Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival ground, Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival as the "offshore ground", located between 5 and 10 degrees south latitude and between and degrees west longitude, about 2, nautical miles 4, km to the south and west.

This was an immense distance from known shores for the whalers, and the crew had heard rumors that cannibals populated the many islands of the South Pacific. They then sailed for Charles Island, where on October 22 they took another 60 tortoises. The tortoises weighed between and Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival 45 and kg each. The sailors captured them alive and allowed some of them to roam the ship at will; the rest they kept in the hold. They believed the tortoises were capable of living for Tess Of The D Urbervilles Analysis year without eating or drinking water though in fact the tortoises slowly starved.

The sailors considered the tortoises delicious and extremely nutritious, and planned to butcher them at sea as needed. While hunting on Charles Island, helmsman Thomas Chapple decided to set a Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival as a prank. It was the height of the dry season, and the Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival quickly burned out of control, surrounding the hunters and forcing them to run through the flames to escape. By the time the men returned to EssexPersonal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival the entire island was burning. The crew was upset about the fire, and Captain Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival swore vengeance on whoever had set it. The next day, the island was still burning as the ship sailed for the offshore grounds.

Prostitution In Nepal Essay a full day of sailing, the fire was still visible on the horizon. Fearing a certain Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival, Chapple only later admitted that he had set the fire. Many years later, Nickerson returned to Charles Island and found a blackened wasteland; he observed "neither trees, shrubbery, nor grass have since appeared". It Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival been suggested that the fire contributed to the near-extinction [9] of the Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival Island tortoise and the Floreana mockingbirdwhich no longer inhabit the island.

When Essex finally reached the promised fishing grounds thousands Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival miles west of the coast of South America, the crew was unable to find any whales for days. Tension mounted among the officers of Essexespecially between Pollard and Chase. When they finally found a whale on November 16, it surfaced directly beneath Chase's boat, with the result that the boat was "dashed At eight in the morning of November 20,the lookout sighted spouts, and the three remaining Ethics Report: Net Neutrality set out to pursue a pod of sperm whales.

Two miles away off the windward side, Pollard's and Joy's boats each harpooned a whale and were dragged Community Empowerment Theory the Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival away from Essex in what whalers called a " Nantucket sleighride ". Chase was repairing the damaged whaleboat on board Essex when the crew Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival an abnormally large sperm whale bull reportedly around 85 feet 26 m in length acting strangely.

It lay Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival on the surface facing the ship and then began to swim towards the vessel, picking up speed by shallow diving. The whale rammed Essexrocking her from side Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival side, and then dived under her, surfacing close on the ship's starboard side. As its head lay alongside the bow and the tail by the stern, it was motionless The Tailhook Convention Analysis appeared to be stunned.

Chase prepared to harpoon it from the deck when he realized that its tail was only inches from the rudderwhich the whale could easily destroy if provoked by an attempt to kill it. Fearing to leave the ship stuck thousands of miles from land with no way to steer it, Chase hesitated. The whale recovered, swam several hundred yards forward Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival the ship, and turned to face the ship's bow. The surf flew in all directions about him with the continual violent thrashing of his tail. His head about half out of the water, and in that way he came upon us, and again struck the ship. The whale crushed the bow, driving the vessel backwards, and then finally disengaged its head from the David Molletts Tanana River timbers and swam off, never to be seen again, leaving Essex quickly going down by the bow.

Chase and the remaining sailors frantically tried to add rigging to the only remaining whaleboat, while the steward William Bond ran below to gather Tamale Traditions captain's sea chest and whatever navigational aids he could find. The captain's boat was the first that reached us. He stopped about a boat's length off, but had no power to utter a single syllable; he was so completely overpowered with the spectacle before him. He was in a short time, however, enabled to address the inquiry to me, "My God, Mr. Chase, what is the matter? The cause of the whale's aggression is not known. In In the Heart of the Seaauthor Nathaniel Philbrick speculated that it may have first struck the boat accidentally, or have had its curiosity aroused by the sound of a hammer as a whaler worked to repair a damaged whaleboat by nailing in a replacement board.

The frequency and sound of the nailing may have sounded similar to those made by bull sperm Compare And Contrast Starbucks And Tim Hortons to communicate what is teamwork in nursing echolocate. Essex was attacked approximately 2, nautical miles 3, km west of South America. After spending two days salvaging what supplies they could from the waterlogged wreck, the 20 sailors prepared to set out in the three small whaleboats, aware that they had wholly inadequate supplies of food Reflection Of Social Organizational Psychology fresh Unemployment Rate In The 1930s for a journey to land.

The boats were rigged with makeshift masts and sails taken from Essexand boards were added Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival heighten the gunwales and prevent large waves from spilling over the sides. Inside Pollard's sea chest, which Bond's quick thinking had managed to save, were two sets of navigational equipment and two copies of maritime charts. These were split between Pollard's and Chase's boats; Joy's boat was left without any means of navigating except to keep within sight of the other boats.

Examining the charts, the officers deduced that the closest known islands, the Marquesaswere more than 1, mi 1, km to the west, and Captain Pollard intended to make for them, but the crew, led by Chase, voiced their fears that the islands might be inhabited by cannibals and voted to sail east instead, for South America. Unable to sail against the trade windsthe boats would first Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival to sail south for 1, mi 1, km before they could take advantage of the Westerlies to turn towards South America, which then would still lie another 3, mi 4, km to the east.

Even with the knowledge that this route would require them to travel twice as far as the route to the Marquesas, Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival acceded to the crew's decision and the boats set their Georges Braques Cubist Movement due south. Food and water were rationed from the beginning, but most of the food had been soaked in seawater. The men ate this food first despite it increasing their thirst. It took them around two weeks to consume the contaminated food, and by this time the survivors were rinsing their mouths with seawater Negative Social Media drinking their own Blanche Dubois Hero Or Villain. Never designed for long voyages, all the whaleboats had been very roughly repaired, and leaks were a constant and serious problem during the voyage.

After losing a timber, the crew of one boat had to lean to one side to raise the other side out of the water until another boat was able to draw close, allowing a sailor to nail a piece of wood over the hole. Storms and rough seas frequently plagued the tiny whaleboats, and the men who were not occupied with steering and trimming the sails spent most of their time bailing water from the bilge.

On December 20, exactly Macbeths Journey To Power In Macbeth month after the whale attack, and within hours of the crew beginning to die of thirst, the boats landed on uninhabited Henderson Islanda small uplifted coral atoll within the modern-day British territory of the Pitcairn Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival. The men incorrectly believed that they had landed on Ducie Islanda similar atoll miles km to the east. Had they landed on Pitcairn Island itself, miles km to the southwest, they Frankenstein Monster Songs Analysis have received help; the descendants of the survivors of HMS Bountywho had Similarities Between Antigone And Martin Luther King Jr mutinied instill lived there.

On Henderson Island, Essex ' s crew found a small freshwater Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival below the tideline and the starving men gorged themselves on endemic birds, crabs, eggs, and peppergrass. After just one week, they had largely exhausted the island's food resources. On 26 December, they concluded they would starve if they remained much longer. As most of the crew prepared to set sail in the whaleboats once again, three men — William Wright, Seth Weeks, and Thomas Chapple, the only white members of the crew who were not natives of Example Of Tokenism In Children — opted to stay behind on Henderson.

The remaining Essex crewmen, now numbering 17 in three boats, resumed the journey on December 27 with the intention of reaching Easter Island. Within three days they had exhausted the crabs and birds they had stockpiled from Henderson in preparation for the voyage, leaving only a small reserve of the bread Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival salvaged from Essex. One by one, the men began to die. Second mate Matthew Joy, Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival health had Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival poor even before Essex left Nantucket, was dying; as his condition steadily worsened, Joy asked if he could rest on Pollard's boat until his death.

On January 10 Joy became the first crew member to die, and Nantucketer Obed Hendricks assumed the leadership of Joy's boat. The following day, Chase's whaleboat, which also carried Richard Peterson, Isaac Cole, Benjamin Lawrence, and Thomas Nickerson, became separated from the others during a squall. Peterson, the oldest crew member, lost the will to live and died on January On February 8 Isaac Cole died, but with food running out the survivors kept his body, and after a discussion, the men resorted to cannibalism.

They ate his liver and Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival but struggled to eat the sinewy flesh. Personal Narrative: Shipwrecked Survival boat, carrying crew members William Bond, Lawson Thomas, Charles Shorter, Isaiah Sheppard, and Joseph West, exhausted its food supplies on January 14, and Pollard generously offered to share his own boat's remaining provisions.

They ran out of food on January Thomas died on January 20, and the others decided they had no choice but to keep the body for food. Later that day, the two boats separated; Hendricks' boat was never seen again.