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In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents-including a long-lost account written by the ship's cabin boy-and penetrating details about whaling and the Nantucket community to reveal the chilling events surrounding this epic maritime disaster. An intense and mesmerizing read, In the Heart of the Sea is a monumental work of history forever placing the Essex tragedy in the American historical canon..
Price: $8.70
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The Loss of the Ship Essex, Sunk by a Whale (Penguin Classics)
In 1820, the Nantucket whaleship Essex, thousands of miles from home in the South Pacific, was rammed by an angry sperm whale. The Essex sank, leaving twenty crew members floating in three small boats for ninety days. The incident was the Titanic story of its day, and provided the inspiration for Melville's Moby-Dick. The Narrative of the Wreck of the Whaleship Essex, by the ship's first mate, Owen Chase, has long been the fundamental account of the Essex's doomed voyage. But in 1980, a new account of the disaster was discovered, penned by Thomas Nickerson, the fifteen-year-old cabin boy who was steering the ship when the whale attacked. Now, Nickerson's harrowing tale can be read alongside Chase's in one authoritative edition, which includes more than a dozen other accounts from articles and newspapers, many of which have never appeared in book form..
Price: $4.50
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The Revenge of the Whale: The True Story of the Whaleship Essex
On November 20, 1820, the whaleship Essex was rammed and sunk by an angry whale. Within minutes, the twenty-one-man crew, including the fourteen-year-old cabin boy Thomas Nickerson, found themselves stranded in three leaky boats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with barely any supplies and little hope. Three months later, two of the boats were rescued 4,500 miles away, off the coast of South America. Of the twenty-one castaways, only eight survived, including young Thomas. Based on his New York Times best-seller In the Heart of the Sea, Nathaniel Philbrick recreates the amazing events of the ill-fated Essex through the sailors’ own first-hand accounts, photos, maps, and artwork, and tells the tale of one of the great true-life adventure stories..
Price: $1.50
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In the Wake of Madness: The Murderous Voyage of the Whaleship Sharon
After more than a century of silence, the true story of one of history's most notorious mutinies is revealed in Joan Druett's riveting "nautical murder mystery" (USA Today). On May 25, 1841, the Massachusetts whaleship Sharon set out for the whaling ground of the northwestern Pacific. A year later, while most of the crew was out hunting, Captain Howes Norris was brutally murdered. When the men in the whaleboats returned, they found four crew members on board, three of whom were covered in blood, the other screaming from atop the mast. Single-handedly, the third officer launched a surprise attack to recapture the Sharon, killing two of the attackers and subduing the other. An American investigation into the murder was never conducted--even when the Sharon returned home three years later, with only four of the original twenty-nine crew on board. Joan Druett, a historian who's been called a female Patrick O'Brian by the Wall Street Journal, dramatically re-creates the mystery of the ill-fated whaleship and reveals a voyage filled with savagery under the command of one of the most ruthless captains to sail the high seas..
Price: $1.09
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The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex
On the morning of November 20, 1820, in the Pacific Ocean, an enraged sperm whale rammed the Nantucket whaler Essex. As the boat began to sink, her crew of thirty had time only to collect some bread and water before pulling away in three frail open boats. Without charts, alone on the open seas, and thousands of miles from any known land, the sailors began their terrifying journey of survival. Ninety days later, after much suffering and death by starvation, intense heat, and dehydration, only eight men survived to reach land. One of them was Owen Chase, first mate of the ill-fated ship, whose account of the long and perilous journey has become a classic of endurance and human courage. The elements of his tale inspired Herman Melville (who was born the year the Essex sank) to write the classic Moby Dick. A gallant saga of the sea, this riveting narration of life and death, of man against the deep, will enthrall readers. .
Price: $1.94
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Demon of the Waters: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Whaleship Globe
The mutiny of the whale-ship "Globe" in the South Pacific in 1825 was one of the goriest incidents in American maritime history and has achieved legendary status in seafaring lore. At the centre of the mutiny was a young man raised in a staunch Nantucket Quaker family, Samuel Comstock, one of the most bizarre and frightening figures who ever went to sea. This is an account of the legendary mutiny, packed with incident and detail..
Price: $3.00
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Stove by a Whale: Owen Chase and the Essex
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Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex
The original narratives of the whaling disaster that inspired Moby-Dick. Melville's famous description of the sinking of the Pequod by the white whale--one of the most exciting moments in American literature--was based on a true story documented in 1821 by first mate Owen Chase in his Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex, and by his shipmate and captain in two separate accounts. Each account tells of a sperm whale's attack on the Essex in the South Seas, and of the crew's three-month struggle while stranded in small open boats. Of twenty men, eight survived. Six who died were eaten by their shipmates, one--the cabin boy--after lots had been drawn. The captain writes that he exclaimed, My lad, my lad, if you don't like your lot, I'll shoot the first man that touches you. The boy replied, I like it as well as any other. He was soon dispatched, the captain writes, and nothing of him left . . . my head is on fire at the recollection. This volume reproduces these gripping accounts, as well as Herman Melville's notes on the narratives. It sheds light on both our darkest impulses and our most ascendant selves, and gives rare insight into the workings of one of the most important literary minds of all time..
Price: $5.95
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Ambassador to the Penguins: A Naturalist's Year Aboard a Yankee Whaleship
In 1912, a young naturalist named Robert Cushman Murphy was offered the opportunity of a lifetime to spend a year on one of the last Yankee whaleships out of New Bedford, on a voyage to the Antarctic. Only recently married, Murphy had many regrets at leaving his wife Grace so early in their life together, but he saw that the chance to journey to the end of the world, to bring back new specimens, to record what he saw, was also the chance to launch a stellar career. During the voyage, Murphy kept a journal, packing it with observations of his experiences on board, both as a naturalist and as a witness to a disappearing way of life. When he was not taking photographs and developing them in seawater, or skinning birds to take back to the American Museum of Natural History, he was watching his shipmates raid penguins' nests or harpoon whales and boil down their stripped carcasses. This journal, recorded in the voice of a man who relished the world around him, was later published as Logbook for Grace and became a bestseller. Murphy himself went on to become a world authority on oceanic birds. Eleanor Mathews, his granddaughter, has now taken this extraordinary diary, updating & supplementing it with never-before-published information and his own original photographs. She presents his voyage in a compelling third-person narrative, maintaining his voice while expanding the tale for modern readers. As a story of seafaring life, a portrait of the whaling industry still under sail, an account of a natural history expedition, and a love letter to an absent wife, it was described as a book to set on the shelf beside Moby-Dick & Two Years Before the Mast. Logbook for Grace has disappeared; but we can proudly offer Ambassador to the Penguins to replace it..
Price: $7.07
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