This National Book Award winner recounts the tragic shipwreck of the whale ship Essex and her crew and is the true story that that inspired Herman Melville’s epic novel, Moby Dick. Just a few years after the Essex was wrecked, Melville was working aboard a whaling ship in the Pacific when he had a chance encounter with one of the Essex’s survivor's sons. After receiving a copy of the father's narration of the disastrous voyage, Melville was moved to write Moby Dick.
The Essex left Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1819 on a two-and-a-half-year voyage in the whaling grounds of the South Pacific. On the morning of November 20, 1820 the ship was attacked in a remote area of the Pacific by an 85 foot long sperm whale. The ship sank and her 20 crewmen escaped in three 25-foot poorly provisioned whale boats. The crew was adrift for three months in the Pacific and had to fight the elements, thirst and starvation.
If you like survival tales you will absolutely love this book. Philbrick did a great job researching the story (he lives in Nantucket) and, adventure-wise, it reads every bit as good as Melville’s thriller. Ironically Mellville’s story ends when the whale sinks the ship. In Philbrick’s account, the story is just beginning when the whale appears.
A word of warning, this book is not for the squeamish; the author thoroughly researched how people die of starvation and thirst and spares none of the details including the cannibalism that followed the shipwreck and such esoteric information as how much “meat” can be harvested from the average human body (65 pounds). But do not let that keep you from reading this excellent book. Philbrick brilliantly captures what it must have felt like drifting for months in one of the small lifeboats wondering if you are going to survive. The author also marries great history lessons about nineteenth century whaling with tales of man and the at sea, racism, Quakerism, navigation, seamanship, and leadership. I especially appreciated the author’s careful examination of the different leadership styles exemplified by the ship’s captain George Pollard and his first mate, Owen Chase. Writing in the Penguin Reading Guide to this book Philbrick comments on the Captain’s leadership:
“Pollard was certainly unlucky, but he also had difficulty asserting his will upon the crew. Pollard was a first-time captain and seemed hesitant to overrule his subordinates. In just about every situation, his instincts were correct, but he inevitably allowed himself to be talked out of his convictions by his two mates, Owen Chase and Matthew Joy. As leadership psychologists will tell you, a leader, particularly in a survival situation, must make decisions firmly and quickly. Pollard was too much of a Hamlet.”
If you enjoyed books like Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm or Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air you will enjoy this book as well. Of course you can also wait until the book is made into a movie. According to Variety a movie based on the book should head into production sometime this year. Just remember; a movie is never as good as the book it is based upon.
No comments:
Post a Comment