9/12/2023 0 Comments Captain george pollard jr.![]() On January 28, 1821, the two remaining boats were separated. On January 23, Shorter died, while Sheppard and Samuel Reed, a man on Pollard’s boat, died on January 27 and 28, respectively. On January 20, Thomas had died, and his body was kept for food. ![]() Captain Pollard agreed to share the remaining provisions of his boat with them.īut it was no use, and on January 21, all the food supplies were exhausted. On January 14, 1821, Hendrick’s whaleboat that carried Lawson Thomas, Isaiah Sheppard, William Bond, Joseph West, and Charles Shorter ran out of food supplies. The survivors, desperate in their lack of food, resorted to cannibalism. On January 18, 1821, Peterson, one of the oldest crew members, died, followed almost immediately by Isaac Cole. On January 10, Chase’s whaleboat, carrying the crewmen Isaac Cole, Thomas Nickerson, Richard Peterson, and Benjamin Laurence, separated from the other whaleboats due to a squall. As per custom, Joy was sewn into his own clothes and later buried in the sea. On January 10, 1821, Joy died, and Obed Hendricks took charge of his boat. The health condition of Matthew Joy worsened with time, and he wanted to rest on the boat of Captain Pollard. The men were starting to die out of hunger and thirst. Captain Pollard gave an order to launch three whaling boats, which managed to successfully corral a number of whales. A Date with Destinyīack in open water, the crew of the Essex next spotted a sperm whale in November 1820. The entire crew of the Essex was upset about the fire incident, and a crewmember called Thomas Chapple later admitted to setting the fire. When the crewmen had reached the safety of the Essex, they could see that the whole island was on fire. Ernest Shackleton – Surviving Antartica.Taken by the Ice: What Became of the Franklin Expedition Crew?. ![]() Soon, it went out of their control, and they had to run through flames in order to save their lives and escape. As it was a dry season, and a fire started by the shore party started burning and spreading very quickly. Not content with removing the tortoises from Charles Island, the crew managed to torch it as well. The sailors believed that the tortoises could survive without food and water for nearly a year, they were collected alive and left to roam around in the ship. The tortoises stacked well in the ship’s hold and provided plenty of meat, weighing somewhere around 100 to 800 pounds. Giant tortoises were considered ideal provisions (Matthew Field / CC BY-SA 3.0 ) The crewmembers collected some 300 giant turtles for their food, and then on October 22, while heading towards Charles Island, they collected more than 60 tortoises as well. The ship stopped at Galápagos in October 1820 in order to stock up the provisions and repair some serious leaks that had appeared. In September 1820, one of the sailors, Henry DeWitt, left at Atacames in Ecuador, thereby reducing the number of crew members to 20 men. The crew of the Essex were able to catch a sperm whale every five days, collecting about 450 barrels of oil before rough conditions forced them west. Their fate started changing after reaching the region near Peru. For several months, they patrolled up and down the Chilean coastline but sighted only a few whales. However, as the region was fished out, they headed towards the Pacific with the hope of better luck, rounding Cape Horn in January 1820. The crew was even successful in catching their first sperm whale near Brazil. There the Essex was repaired and again set off towards South America. Lucky once again, the ship reached Cape Verde Island at the end of September. For about 20 years, all the voyages of The Essex had been successful, and often it was called a lucky vessel, popular with her crews.Ĭaptain Pollard opted to carry on the voyage without stopping to repair or replace the damaged whaleboats. The Essex was an American whaleship that was launched back in 1799. Obviously, this was not a normal occurrence – the idea of a whale attacking a ship was as sensational and shocking to Moby Dick’s 1851 readership as the story of a giant shark attacking beachgoers in Amity Island a century later. The Essex actually sank due to a whale attack, providing inspiration for Melville to write his book some 20 years later. One of the prominent stories among them was that of the Essex, a whaleship operating in the early 19th century. Well, while the murderous, gigantic white whale in the novel of Melville was a fictional one, Melville drew inspiration from a number of real-life horror stories. Have you read the novel named Moby Dick by Herman Melville? If you have read it, you must be surely wondering whether there was real Moby Dick or not.
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