Review: Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin

Part Mark Kurlansky and John McPhee, -- authors I love -- Eric Dolan has written an absolutely fascinating book about whales and the history of the whaling industry. Much as those authors bring quotidian things and events to life.  It's also part literary criticism and biography.

 

The first whaling was done by settlers who copied the Indians dismantling of stranded pilot whales along the coast. This was succeeded by shore-based whaling as the value of whale oil became apparent leading to taxation and division of the spoils according to detailed rules.  What happened, for example, when a whale washed up on the beach attached to a harpoon?  Who "owned" the whale? This led to marking harpoons and lances, much as lobster fishermen do to buoys today, to help identify who might own a share.

 

Gradually, as the Indians, who had performed much of the labor connected to whaling, died off from diseases brought back by those same ships, and as the value of the product rose immensely, blacks were hired to work. The case of Prince Boston was to have profound implications nationally. He was an excellent boat steerer, and having returned from a voyage was due the princely sum of 28 pounds, a substantial amount.  His owner, Swain, claimed the money belonged to him and when Roach, the ship's owner, who despised slavery, insisted on paying Boston directly, Swain sued. He lost in all venues. In the Mass. Supreme Court, Boston was not only awarded the money but also given his freedom.

 

Whaling leveled racial animosity. Escaped slaves would often seek out berths on whaling vessels as a way to earn money (they got equal wages with their white counterparts) as well as escape the depredations of the slave catchers. Most Nantucket whaling captains wanted nothing to do with racial animosity and valued their black sailors.  There were exceptions. One Second Mate who became captain after the deaths of the Captain and his First Mate, decided he could make a lot of money by turning his ship into a slaver and sailed off to Africa where he obtained a load of slaves, a profitable voyage, indeed.  Whale ships were designed to have lots of room in the hold making them well-suited for such evil transactions.

 

The story behind Moby Dick is interesting.  Melville had signed on has a hand on a whale ship for a 1/175th share (the whole section on how they were paid and the pittance ordinary seamen earned is revealing.) During a GAM -- when two whale ships met in the ocean they would hang our for several days mingling crews and exchanging gossip -- Melville met a young man by the name of Chase who recounted his time on the Essex, a ship that was rammed by a large sperm whale and battered until it sank. The few crew members who survived did so by consuming their companions. (See my review of Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex.) Melville was so taken by the story he used it for, well, you know...  

 

The heyday of whaling was the 1850's before the discovery of coal gas and kerosene as alternative lighting options. The predations of the confederate raiders Shenandoah and Alabama which preyed almost exclusively on the whaling fleet -- they couldn't shoot back so it was easy pickings, destroyed many ships, but the great ice-in of 1871 and 1876, when with typical white man hubris they had ignored the warning of the Eskimos in the Arctic, not only destroyed many ships, but badly hurt the insurance industry which had to take the brunt of the losses. (The story of of 100 whale boat trek to open water is quite a story in itself.) The ever-increasing availability of oil and its refinements spelled doom for the whaling industry, which diminished to nothing by the end of the 19th century.

 

Wonderful read.

 

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

 Everyone knows the story of Moby Dick, the great white whale chased by Captain Ahab, that succeeds in sinking Ahab’s ship. Apparently, Herman Melville based the story on a real event, although the sperm whale was not white, merely an enraged, but also seemingly cunning, bull sperm whale. It’s this story of the whale ship Essex, and of the grim events that faced the sailors who left Nantucket in 1820, that Philbrick tells of in rather horrifying detail .

The Essex’s Captain Pollard was on his first command and was only recently married when they sailed for the Pacific whaling grounds. The voyage did not get off to a good start when only a short while after their departure, he insisted on maintaining studding sails during a regular blow that resulted in a knockdown, the ship being blown over on its side by a strong gust of wind. That it ever righted itself was extraordinary and a testament to the seaworthiness of these vessels that were crewed usually by some twenty to thirty men. His crew was still quite green and the experience must have been unnerving, to say the least. Nantucket was populated by Quakers who never quite adjusted to the presence of offislanders, i.e., anyone not born on the island. They were also, despite their professed pacifistic nature, a rather savage lot. There was a “blood lust and pride that bound every mother, father and child in a clannish commitment to the hunt. . . . There was rumored to be a secret society of young women on the island whose members pledged to marry only men who had already killed a whale.” Be that as it may, they were not having much luck initially, but after a difficult passage around the Horn, they managed to find a pod of whales and begin filling the hold. Philbrick provides rich detail of the whaling industry and the lives of the men who crewed the ships.

The book is worth reading for just that minutiae alone. In any case, two of the eventual survivors recorded the events in detail, so Philbrick has some evidence to help ground his narrative. It appears this bull sperm whale, estimated to be 85 feet long, quite large, only two feet shorter than the ship itself, drove head-on into the ship. Initially the crew suspected it must have been an accident, but this guy lined himself up and headed back in for a second shot, this time staving in the planks by the forecastle, causing water to rush in below the waterline and the ship to begin sinking. They managed to save three whaleboats and a substantial amount of provisions and water. Regretfully, the captain was not a forceful man, for his plan to sail westward to the Marquesas Islands probably would have saved many lives. That coupled with his inadequate navigational skills, particularly as they related to finding one’s longitude, and the crew’s fear of suspected cannibalism on those islands – an ironic fear, given what was to follow – forced his decision to follow the first mate Chase’s advice to sail for the west coast of South America, several thousand miles farther than the Marquesas. Cannibalism was an accepted reality among shipwrecked sailors, and, in fact, most of those who survived long voyages at sea following a shipwreck often had a time convincing their rescuers that they had not indulged in the practice. 

Philbrick’s description of the eventual eating of one’s fellow crewmen – they even cast lots to see who would die and be eaten – would make Stephen King proud and bring new meaning to the word “gross.” Had the crew adopted the practice of another shipwrecked crew, they might have survived without having had to indulge in the practice. This other crew cut up a sailor who died from hunger and used his parts for bait, catching many sharks that provided enough sustenance to get them through the ordeal. The Essex survivors never caught any fish. The story of what happened to the survivors after their rescue is as interesting as the rest of the book.