Episode 118.2 - 'My God, Mr. Chase, what is the matter?': The Whaleship Essex, Part Two
09/14/23 • 70 min
Part Two of our series on the whaleship Essex brings us from Nantucket all the way around Cape Horn to the Pacific whaling grounds, and the climactic showdown with 'the largest and most terrible of all created animals.'
Sources:
Dolin, Eric Jay. Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America. W.W Norton & Company, 2008.
Ellis, Richard. The Great Sperm Whale: A Natural History of the Ocean's Most Magnificent and Mysterious Creature. University Press of Kansas, 2011.
Heffernan, Thomas Farel. Stove By a Whale: Owen Chase and the Essex. Wesleyan University Press, 1990.
Pappas, Stephanie. "Why Has a Group of Orcas Suddenly Started Attacking Boats?" Scientific American, 24 May 2023. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-has-a-group-of-orcas-suddenly-started-attacking-boats/
Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea. Penguin Books, 2000.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. "'Every Wave Is a Fortune': Nantucket Island and the Making of an American Icon." The New England Quarterly, vol. 66, no. 3, Sep 1993, pp. 434 - 447.
The Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex: The True Story that Inspired Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Warbler Classics, 2022.
Shoemaker, Nancy. "Oil, Spermaceti, Ambergris, and Teeth." RCC Perspectives, no. 5 (New Histories of Pacific Whaling), 2019, pp. 17 - 22.
Part Two of our series on the whaleship Essex brings us from Nantucket all the way around Cape Horn to the Pacific whaling grounds, and the climactic showdown with 'the largest and most terrible of all created animals.'
Sources:
Dolin, Eric Jay. Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America. W.W Norton & Company, 2008.
Ellis, Richard. The Great Sperm Whale: A Natural History of the Ocean's Most Magnificent and Mysterious Creature. University Press of Kansas, 2011.
Heffernan, Thomas Farel. Stove By a Whale: Owen Chase and the Essex. Wesleyan University Press, 1990.
Pappas, Stephanie. "Why Has a Group of Orcas Suddenly Started Attacking Boats?" Scientific American, 24 May 2023. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-has-a-group-of-orcas-suddenly-started-attacking-boats/
Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea. Penguin Books, 2000.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. "'Every Wave Is a Fortune': Nantucket Island and the Making of an American Icon." The New England Quarterly, vol. 66, no. 3, Sep 1993, pp. 434 - 447.
The Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex: The True Story that Inspired Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Warbler Classics, 2022.
Shoemaker, Nancy. "Oil, Spermaceti, Ambergris, and Teeth." RCC Perspectives, no. 5 (New Histories of Pacific Whaling), 2019, pp. 17 - 22.
Previous Episode
Episode 118.1 - 'Dare the Whole World to Produce a Parallel': The Whaleship Essex, Part One
This week begins our multi-part episode on the whaleship Essex, famously 'stove by a whale' in 1820, leading to an epic tale of survival, determination, and just a bit of cannibalism.
Part I focuses on the history of whaling industry in (first) Britain's American colonies and (then) the young United States, with special attention to the island of Nantucket.
Sources:
Bouk, Dan and D. Graham Burnett. "Knowledge of Leviathan: Charles W. Morgan Anatomizes His Whale." Journal of the Early Republic, Fall 2008, pp. 433 - 466.
Dolin, Eric Jay. Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America. W.W Norton & Company, 2008.
Ellis, Richard. The Great Sperm Whale: A Natural History of the Ocean's Most Magnificent and Mysterious Creature. University Press of Kansas, 2011.
Jacob, Karl. "Nantucket's Bid for Survival During the War of 1812." Nantucket Historical Association, 2023, https://nha.org/research/nantucket-history/history-topics/nantuckets-bid-for-survival-during-the-war-of-1812/
Lu, Donna. "Nearly 200 stranded pilot whales die on Tasmanian beach but dozens saved and returned to sea." The Guardian, 22 Sep 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/sep/22/nearly-200-stranded-pilot-whales-die-on-tasmanian-beach
Michaels, Debra. "Lucretia Mott (1793 - 1880)". National Women's History Museum. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/lucretia-mott
Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea. Penguin Books, 2000.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. "'Every Wave Is a Fortune': Nantucket Island and the Making of an American Icon." The New England Quarterly, vol. 66, no. 3, Sep 1993, pp. 434 - 447.
Shoemaker, Nancy. "Oil, Spermaceti, Ambergris, and Teeth." RCC Perspectives, no. 5 (New Histories of Pacific Whaling), 2019, pp. 17 - 22.
Next Episode
Episode 118.3 - 'I like it as well as any other...': The Whaleship Essex, Part Three
In this third and final part of the story, we see the men of the whaleship Essex embark on a journey of thousands of miles in open whaleboats in the hope of reaching the safety of the South American coast.
Less than half of them will survive the ordeal, but for some their role in the story will continue even beyond death.
Sources:
Brantlinger, Patrick. “Missionaries and Cannibals in Nineteenth-century Fiji.” History and Anthropology, vol. 17, no. 1, 2006, pp. 21-38.
Heffernan, Thomas Farel. Stove By a Whale: Owen Chase and the Essex. Wesleyan University Press, 1990.
Hernández Gutierrez, José María. "Traveling Anthropophagy: The Depiction of Cannibalism in Modern Travel Writing, 16th to 19th Centuries." The Journal of World History, vol. 30, no. 3, Sept 2019.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea. Penguin Books, 2000.
The Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex: The True Story that Inspired Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Warbler Classics, 2022.
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