In the Heart of the Sea (33 page)

made the disparaging remark about the state of the streets and observed the use of quarterboards as fences. Joseph Sansom wrote about the naming of the town's streets (Crosby, p. 142). Walter Folger's comparison of the community to a family is in Crosby (p. 97); Obed Macy's remarks concerning the Nantucketers' “consanguinity” is in his History (p. 66). For a more detailed description of downtown Nantucket, see my Away OffShore (pp. 7-10); see also Edouard Stackpole's Rambling Through the Streets and Lanes of Nantucket. According to an article in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror (February 14,1931), a grand total of 134 sea captains have lived on Orange Street.

In 1807 James Freeman remarked that “not more than one half of the males and two thirds of the females, who attend the Friends' meetings, are members of the society” (Crosby, p. 132). Charles Murphey (the same man who was on the Dauphin when the Essex boat was discovered) wrote the poem about gazing upon the women during a Quaker meeting; it is in his journal of a voyage on the ship Maria, 1832-1836, on microfilm at the NHA. In the same poem Murphey tells of being “With girls o'er mill hills promenading.” The Nantucketer William Coffin, father of the man who probably ghostwrote Owen Chase's narrative of the Essex, spoke of how rarely he strayed from town in 1793 (NHA Collection 150, Folder 78).

Walter Folger tells of Nantucket children learning Wampanoag whaling phrases “as soon as they can talk” (Crosby, p. 97); the anecdote about the boy harpooning the family cat is in William F. Macy's Scrap-Basket (p. 23); on Nantucket's secretwomen's society, see Joseph Hart's Miriam Coffin, where he states, “The daughter of a whale-fisherman loses caste, and degrades herself in the eyes of her acquaintance, if she unites her destiny to a landsman” (p. 251). Although the poem that begins “Death to the living” had been in common use long before, it appears in a sequence of toasts delivered at a banquet in celebration of the voyage of the Loper in 1830 (Nantucket Inquirer, September 25). The statistics concerning widows and fatherless children appear in Edward Byers's Nation of Nantucket (p. 257). The gravestone inscriptions for Nickerson's parents are recorded in NHA Collection 115, Box II. All genealogical information concerning the Nantucket crew members of the Essex comes from the NHA's newly computerized Eliza Barney Genealogy; information about the Nickersons is from The Nickerson Family (Nickerson Family Association, 1974).

In his Letters from an American Farmer, Crevecoeur speaks of Nantucket's “superior wives” and their “incessant visiting” (p. 157), as well as their use of opium (p. 160) and the effects of marriage (p. 158). Lucretia Mott's comments concerning the socializing of husbands and wives on Nantucket is in Margaret Hope Bacon's Valiant Friend (p. 17). Eliza Brock's journal containing the “Nantucket Girl's Song” is at the NHA; she kept the journal while on a whaling voyage with her husband from May 1853 to 1856.1 discuss the validity of Crevecoeur's remarks about opium use in “The Nantucket Sequence in Crevecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer” in the New England Quarterly. For a discussion of he's-at-homes, see my Away Off Shore (p. 257); for an account of the discovery of a he's-at-home on Nantucket, see Thomas Congdon's “Mrs. Coffin's Consolation” in Forbes FYI.

Crevecoeur records, “I was much surprised at the disagreeable smell which struck me in many parts of the town; it is caused by the whale oil and is unavoidable; the neatness peculiar to these people can neither remove or prevent it” (p. 111). The smell apparently emanated from right-whale oil as opposed to sperm oil; see Clifford Ashley's The Yankee Whaler (p. 56). Owen Chase in his narrative of the Essex disaster claims that the upperworks of the Essex were entirely overhauled prior to her leaving in the summer of 1819. William H. Macy describes ships being coppered in Nantucket Harbor (p. 14). On the life span of a whaleship, see In Pursuit of Leviathan by Davis et al. (p. 240). Roger Hambidge, shipwright at Mystic Seaport, spoke to me about the phenomenon of iron sickness inwhaleships and stated that twenty years was about the average life of a ship, a statement corroborated by the statistical analysis in Davis et al. (p. 231). Obed Macy's concerns about the condition of whaleships is in a January 1822 entry in his journal. A listing of Nantucket vessels and their owners in 1820 has Gideon Folger and Sons as owning both the Essex and the Aurora (NHA Collection 335, Folder 976).

William Comstock makes the derogatory remark concerning Nantucket Quakers in The Life of Samuel Comstock (pp. 39-40), where he also speaks of the owners' tendency to underprovision their ships (p. 73). Davis et al. have calculated the return on investment shipping agents typically received in New Bedford (In Pursuit of Leviathan, p. 411); Nantucket owners in the boom year of 1819 were undoubtedly reaping a similar, if not higher, profit. The description of poor economic times on the mainland is in the New Bedford Mercury (June 4. 1819), which quotes from an article in the Baltimore Federal Republi—

can. The comings and goings of the Nantucket whaling fleet can he traced in Alexander Starbuck's History of Nantucket (pp. 428-33).

William H. Macy speaks of the “grand plaza of Nantucket” (p. 15) and how the island's boys would taunt the green hands (p. 21). William F. Macy defines “watching the pass” (p. 140); he also defines “foopaw” (p. 126), “rantum scoot” (p. 134), “manavelins” (p. 131), and the idiom used to describe someone who is cross-eyed (p. 121). William Comstock tells of the whittling code on Nantucket (Voyage to the Pacific, p. 68). More than fifty years earlier, Crevecoeur remarked on the Nantucketers' almost compulsive need to whittle: “[T]hey are never idle. Even if they go to the market-place, which is (if I maybe allowed the expression) the coffee-house of the town, either to transact business or to converse with their friends, they always have a piece of cedar in their hands, and while they are talking, they will, as it were, instinctively employ themselves in converting it into something useful, either in making bungs or spoils for their oil casks, or other useful articles” (p. 156). Joseph San-som tells of how everyone on the island used sea phrases (Crosby, p. 143). A sampling of the unique pronunciations of Nantucketers is recorded in “Vocabulary of English Words, with the corresponding terms as used by the Whalemen” in The Life of Samuel Comstock (p. 57).

The green hand Addison Pratt tells of how he was examined by the shipowner and the captain (p. 12); William H. Macy speaks of how the owners and captains judged the men by their eyes and build (p. 19). William Comstock tells of green hands whose ignorance led them to insist on the longest lay possible (Voyage to the Pacific, pp. 11-12). William H. Macy explains how first-time captains were the lowest in the pecking order in finding a crew (p. 19).

I have used the time frame described by Nickerson to calculate when the Essex was floated over the Nantucket Bar. Pratt provides a detailed description of the loading of a Nantucket whaleship during this period (p. 13). According to Richard Henry Dana, “The average allowance1, in merchant vessels, is six pounds of bread a week, and three quarts of water, and one pound and a half of beef, or one and a quarter of pork, a day, to each man” (The Seaman's Friend, p. 135). William H. Macy tells of how a whaleship was always full, whether it was with provisions or oil (pp. 33-34).

It is difficult to determine exactly how many whaleboats the Essex was originally equipped with since Nickerson and Chase seem to disagree on the subject. She had a minimum of two spare hoats; that it wasn't uncommon for a ship of this period to have three spares is indicated by Comstock. “Two spare boats, placed on a frame over head, shaded the quarter deck, while another, placed on spars which projected over the stern, was ready to be cleared at a moment's warning” (Voyage to the Pacific, p. 14).

Pratt describes taking a packet from Boston to Nantucket (p. 11). According to James and Lois Horton, there were three African American communities in Boston at this time: the “black” section of Beacon Hill in West Boston (where the Museum of Afro-American History is now located); to the north in the area now occupied by the Massachusetts General Hospital; and near the wharves of the North End. The Hortons say that the North End neighborhood “had once been the largest black neighborhood in the city,” but was losing ground to the other areas as of 1830 (pp. 4-5). In Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, there is a black cook whose wife lives on Robinson's Alley (between Hanover and Unity streets) in the North End (pp. 179-80). For a summary discussion of the relative equality enjoyed by blacks on shipboard, see W. Jeffrey Bolster's Blackjacks (pp. 1-6). James Freeman provides the 1807 description of how blacks had replaced Indians as a workforce in the Nantucket whale fishery (Crosby, p. 135). Comstock tells of the harsh treatment of African Americans in The Life of Samuel Comstock (pp. 37-38). William H. Macy claims that the packet delivering green hands from New York to Nantucket was commonly referred to as “the Slaver” (pp. 9,17).

William F. Macy defines gam as a “social visit and talk. Originally this term was applied to a school of whales, and its use by the whalemen is doubtless derived from that source. Whaleships meeting at sea often hove to, and the captains would visit back and forth during the time the ships were in company. Under certain conditions the crews were allowed the privilege also” (p. 126). At the onset of his voyage, the green hand narrator of William H. Macy's There She Blows! feels “that pride in my floating home springing up within me, which every seaman feels for his vessel” (p. 36). According to Ashley, a sailor's mattress, filled with either corn husks or straw, was called a “Donkey's Breakfast” (p. 54). On August 16, 1819 (four days after the Essex left Nantucket), Obed Macy recorded: “The grasshoppers have destroyed the greater part of the turnips”; he also mentions them in September. Information concerning the Chilicom.es from Starbuck (p. 432).

The letter written by the Essex owners to Captain Daniel Russell is at the NHA. The marriage of George Pollard and Mary Riddell (June 17, 1819) is recorded in the Church Records of the South Congregational (now Unitarian) Church on Nantucket, as are the marriages of Owen Chase (the first mate of the Essex) and Peggy Gardner (on April 28, 1819) and Matthew Joy (second mate) andNancySlade (August?, 1817). Curiously, the minister was paid $2.00 for Joy's marriage, $1.50 for Chase's, and $1.25 for Pollard's.

For a description of the division of duties among a ship's officers while weighing anchor, see Richard Henry Dana's Seaman's Friend (pp. 139-40). Information on Captain Pollard's appearance comes from Joseph Warren Phinney's “Nantucket, Far Away and Long Ago,” in Historic Nantucket (p. 29), with notes by his granddaughter Diana Taylor Brown, to whom I am grateful for providing me with a copy of Phinney's original manuscript. Owen Chase's appearance is based on information in the crew list of the Florida (his first ship after the Essex): “five feet, ten inches tall, dark complexioned and brown haired” (Heffernan, p. 120). In the Nantucket Registry of Deeds Grantee Book 22 (p. 262), Owen Chase's father, Judah, is listed as a “husbandman.” Owen Chase's remarks concerning the number of voyages required to become a commander are from his narrative, as are all subsequent quotations attributed to him. While Chase claimed it took just two voyages to qualify to be a captain, the evidence suggests that four was the usual minimum number of voyages (Stuart Frank, personal communication, Oct. 25, 1999). Clifford Ashley, in The Yankee Whaler, describes the use of a whaler's windlass (pp. 49-50), as does Falconer in his Marine Dictionary.

Reuben Delano, in The Wanderings and Adventures of Reuben Delano, speaks of the dramatic sea change that occurred among the officers once a Nantucket whaleship left the island (p. 14). William Comstock defines “spit-fire” in The Life of Samuel Comstock (p. 71);he also tells of how Nantucketers stuck together aboard a whaleship (p. 37). William H. Macy describes the competition among the officers when it came to picking whaleboat crews (p. 39); he also speculates that Noah may have been the first captain to address his crew (p. 40). Pratt's comments about blacks being relegated to the forecastle of a Nantucket whaleship is in his Journals (pp. 14-15). Richard Henry Dana tells of his preference for the forecastle in Two Years Before the Mast (p. 95).

W. Jeffrey Bolster speaks of “yarning” and other activities in the forecastle in Black Jacks (pp. 88-89).

William H. Macy describes the seasickness cure common among Nantucketers (p. 19). My thanks to Don Russell, a descendant of Essex captain Daniel Russell, who mentioned to me a family tradition concerning this same cure. According to Ashley, the lookouts positioned themselves inside hoops installed on the fore and main royal-masts chest-high above the crosstrees (p. 49). However, at this relatively early period in the fishery, there is no evidence of hoops having been installed on the masts of Nantucket whaleships. In Voyage to the Pacific, Comstock writes: “Two jack cross trees were made by the captain, and placed over the top gallant heads, one at the fore, the other at the main. One man was stationed on each, to look out for whales, and relieved every two hours. One of the boatsteerers was kept continually aloft with the man on the main top gallant cross trees, so that while one watched, the other covertly slept” (p. 20).

My discussion of studding sails and the knockdown is based largely on John Harland's invaluable Seamanship in the Age of Sail. According to Harland, the danger of dipping a studding-sail boom into the water even applied to a topgallant studding sail. Darcy Lever's 1819 seamanship guide provides a detailed and illustrated description of taking in studding sails (pp. 82-83); he also has a section entitled “A Ship on Her Beam Ends” (pp. 96-97). Benjamin Franklin's chart of the Gulf Stream is in Everett Crosby's Nantucket in Print (pp. 88-89). According to Harland, when shortening sail,” [t]he most lofty, and the most cumbersome sail was got off first, ideally before the squall hit. Studdingsails (particularly topgallant and lower)... were particularly at risk if the ship were caught unprepared” (p. 222). The naval saying concerning squalls is in Harland (p. 221), as are the other quoted sources.