44 pages • 1 hour read
Nathaniel PhilbrickIn the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “At Sea”
Struggling to familiarize themselves with their new vessels, the men of the Essex also dealt with the fact their vessels were heavily overloaded by almost double their normal operating weight. They determined that they should do everything in their power to remain together as a means of both practical utility—a way of sharing navigational equipment as well as technical expertise—and emotional support. The struggle now was to keep on track for their destination and to carefully guard their provisions: “Each man would get six ounces of hardtack and half a pint of water a day” (106), a starvation diet at best. Making matters worse was the fact that most men regularly used tobacco and so had to experience nicotine withdrawal as well.
As the men continued their journey, it became clear that they would soon run low on water. Meanwhile, Chase was struggling to handle their new circumstances as he continued to relive the events of the whale attack in his own mind. Determined to regain control, Chase began to record their circumstances in a daily log. After one day had passed, the men realized they were ahead of their desired 60-mile-per-day schedule and were optimistic. This hopefulness was short-lived, however, as they realized one of the boats had sprung a leak. They managed to patch it up, but then the realization of their new reality began to sink in: “They knew that the longer the ordeal lasted, the more the boats would suffer […] All it took was the starting of a single nail, and one of these boats might be lost forever” (113).
One night, Pollard’s boat was attacked by an orca; the boat sustained some damage, but the event was more psychologically harrowing than anything else. As Pollard would later relate: “[I]t seemed to us as if fate was wholly relentless, in pursuing us with such a cruel complication of disasters” (116). By this point, the men were beginning to suffer from a condition called hypernatremia, characterized by an excess amount of sodium in the bloodstream that causes tremors and convulsions. After more than a week since the sinking of the Essex, the men decided to kill and eat one of their tortoises.
At this point, they had sailed more than 500 miles from the site of the disaster. After an incident in which Chase’s boat became separated from the others, the crew mutually determined that they would not go looking for a lost boat if the situation repeated itself: ”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” (120). After three weeks the crew had managed to sail over 1,000 miles. Bypassing the Society Islands, the boats continued on.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Centering Down”
After more than three weeks of drifting, the crew realized that they were behind schedule. They had stalled in a region with little wind and were going to run out of provisions. Chase announced that rations needed to be cut in half, but the men’s suffering only continued to increase. The men were in one of the emptiest regions of the Pacific; other than the barnacles they scraped off their boats’ hulls, they caught virtually nothing. In Pollard’s boat, they proposed a plan of taking double rations and rowing until their strength gave out. The plan quickly failed, as the men realized their strength was practically gone: “As man after man collapsed in a slumped heap, it became impossible to continue” (133). By December 19, one month after the shipwreck, the men began to accept that their water was running out and there was likely no chance of survival. The next morning, however, they sighted land.
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Island”
Convinced their suffering had come to an end, the men rejoiced at the discovery of land. At first fearful the island might be inhabited, they sailed around the island firing their guns. Convinced of the island’s emptiness, they waded ashore and collapsed on the beach. The island was largely covered in sharp coral, making it difficult to explore at length, but Pollard managed to capture crabs and birds to create a relative feast for the men to enjoy on the beach.
The survivors determined to spend the next day searching for water and to abandon the island if they couldn’t find any. The next morning they stumbled upon a small spring, allowing them to settle into a relatively peaceful existence while they determined what next step to take. After a few days, however, they realized that they were quickly exhausting the island’s natural resources: “By December 26, their seventh day on Henderson and their thirty-fifth since leaving the wreck, they had resolved to abandon this used-up island” (144-45). Three of the men—Thomas Chappel, Seth Weeks, and William Wright—informed the rest of the crew that they were going to remain on the island. Upon hearing of their plan, Pollard and the rest wished them well and admitted that the plan was not a bad one. Chase, in fact, believed that “the probability of their being able to sustain themselves on the island was much stronger than that of our reaching the mainland” (147).
Before leaving the island, Pollard wrote two letters to leave with the men remaining on the island: one describing their circumstances, and a personal letter for his wife. The next morning, the remaining men set sail in better shape than they had been upon their arrival, with their ships repaired, a week’s worth of meals in their stomachs, and full water barrels.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
As the survivors begin their attempted voyage in earnest, Philbrick further develops themes of Humans’ Relationship With, and Vulnerability to, Nature and The Endurance of the Human Spirit. As the men’s desire to keep the three boats together shows, the two were interrelated. Staying together served a practical purpose, but it was also a bulwark against despair, as Chase noted:
Unaided, and unencouraged by each other, […] there were with us many whose weak minds, I am confident, would have sunk under the dismal retrospections of the past catastrophe, and who did not possess either sense or firmness enough to contemplate our approaching destiny, without the cheering of some more determined countenance than their own (105).
The circumstances into which the survivors had been cast were almost unprecedented, and they were now facing the prospect of attempting a journey of many thousands of miles in boats designed to be launched for very short periods of time. Even more than the ship’s sinking, the ensuing voyage would have underscored just how helpless the men were in the face of nature, subject not only to further attacks (as by the orca) but also to storms, equatorial heat, and the barrenness of the ocean itself. The decision to stay together served as one of the few ways in which the men could continue to control their own lives and destinies: “After having fallen victim to such a seemingly random and inexplicable attack, the men felt an overpowering need to reclaim at least some control of their own destiny” (106). That the crew ultimately decided not to pursue any boat that went missing, therefore, illustrates just how dire the situation had become. Forced to admit the powerlessness of their situation, the officers made one of the few decisions that they could, prioritizing the survival of the majority over the need for cooperation and companionship.
Another factor that tended to demoralize the crew was the sense that perhaps something could have been done to prevent the disaster. Chase dealt with these overwhelming thoughts more than the others, feeling “plagued by what psychologists call a ‘tormenting memory’” where the survivor senses “larger, hidden forces operating through the incident” (108). Unable to accept the event as an example of bad luck or misfortune, “Chase was convinced that the whale that attacked the Essex exhibited ‘decided, calculating mischief’” (108). Viewing the disaster this way is likely how Chase dealt with the seeming randomness of the event; it is easier to feel contempt for a perceived enemy than it is to feel at the mercy of nature.
Furthering the men’s physical and mental suffering was the nature of what they were increasingly reduced to eating. While tortoise meat is in some places considered a delicacy, the situation necessitated making use of as much of the tortoise as possible. The crew cooked and ate the slaughtered tortoise’s entrails, as well as attempted to quench their thirst with its blood: “They collected the blood in the same tin cup from which they drank their water rations. Despite their shrieking thirst, some of the men could not make themselves drink the blood” (118). In Philbrick’s account, the slaughter and consumption of the turtle foreshadow the eventual, and much more psychologically devastating, decision to eat the bodies of those who died.
Under the circumstances, Philbrick suggests that the appearance of the island (later identified as Henderson) kept the men going not only physically but also emotionally. Though unable to support so many people long term, the island provided a brief respite. However, the decision of three crewmembers to remain behind—though understood by those who did not—also illustrates fissures within the group. Philbrick notes that all three of the men were off-islanders, suggesting that they might have felt their chances for survival were better away from the tight-knit Nantucketers. This sets up the following chapters, where identity is in fact closely correlated with survival. While there is relatively little suggestion of conscious favoritism (one notable example was the preponderance of Nantucketers in Chase’s and Pollard’s boats, leaving most of the off-islanders to the boat captained by the lowest-ranking officer), the book suggests that the islanders’ particular camaraderie likely encouraged them to keep going in increasingly desperate circumstances.
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