Product Description

The epic true-life story of one of the most notorious maritime disasters of the 19th century which was the inspiration for Herman Melville's classic novel "Moby Dick". The author uses a hitherto unknown diary of one of the survivors discovered in an attic in Connecticut in spring 1998 to tell the tale. The sinking of the whaleship Essex by an enraged spermwhale in the Pacific in November 1820 set in motion one of the most dramatic sea stories of all time: the twenty sailors who survived the wreck took to three small boats (one of which was again attacked by a whale) and only eight of them survived their subsequent 90-day ordeal, after resorting to cannibalizing their mates. Three months after the Essex was broken up, the whaleship Dauphin, cruising off the coast of South America, spotted a small boat in the open ocean. As they pulled alongside they saw piles of bones in the bottom of the boat, at least two skeletons' worth, with two survivors - almost skeletons themselves - sucking the marrow from the bones of their dead ship-mates.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #290624 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Unknown Binding
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The appeal of Dava Sobel's Longitude was that it illuminated a little-known piece of history through a series of captivating incidents and engaging personalities. Nathaniel Philbrick's In The Heart of the Sea certainly covers the same area, by examining the 19th-century Pacific whaling industry through the arc of the sinking of the whaleship Essex by a boisterous sperm whale. The story which inspired Herman Melville's classic, Moby Dick, has a lot going for it--derring-do, cannibalism, rescue--and Philbrick proves an amiable and well-informed narrator, providing both context and detail. We learn about the importance and mechanics of blubber production--a vital source of oil--and we get the nuts and bolts of harpooning and life onboard whalers. Neither are we spared the nitty gritty of the open boats and sucking human bones dry.

By sticking to the tried and tested Longitude formula, Philbrick has missed a slight trick or two. The epicentre of the whaling industry was Nantucket, a small island off Cape Cod; most of the whales were in the Pacific, a huge journey around the southernmost tip of America. We never learn the reason for this distance and why no one ever tried to create an alternative whaling capital somewhere nearer. Similarly, Philbrick tells us that the story of the Essex was well known to Americans for decades but he never explores how such legends fade from our consciousness. Philbrick would no doubt reply that such questions were beyond his remit and you can't exactly accuse him of skimping on his research; 50 pages of footnotes is impressive by any standards and to give him his credit he wears his learning light. Unlike many academics, he doesn't get bogged down in turgid detail and the narrative rattles along at a nice pace. And when the story line is as good as this, you can't really ask for more.--John Crace

Review
In the Heart of the Sea is a true adventure briskly told, a harrowing and unstoppable read. In 1820, when the whaler Essex went down in the vast and barely charted waters of the southern Pacific Ocean, it was no ordinary catastrophe. Although rumours of similar incidents had been whispered in the whaling community, for the first time surviving witnesses could attest that the ship had been attacked and brought down by its own prey: a sperm whale. The whale that hit the Essex was a monster: around 80 tons and 85 feet or so in length. Furthermore, according to survivors, not only was the fabulous beast brave in defence of his fellows, but also calculating in the way he turned on the Essex: 'as if distracted' wrote one survivor 'with rage and fury'. Philbrick's book stands alone as a gripping yarn about the doomed voyage and its aftermath, but it can simultaneously be read as a primer for Moby Dick, for it was the wreck of the Essex that inspired Melville's lumbering masterpiece of American literature. Stripped of allegory and metaphor, the story remains immensely powerful and particularly chilling about the endless months survivors spent in three small boats on the deserted ocean, with no navigational aids and practically no provisions. The taboo of 'gastronomic incest' was broken, naturally, and ironically too: the survivors had chosen the open sea over a relatively easy landfall out of misinformed fear of local cannibals. With intelligent restraint, relying on testimony and evidence, Philbrick makes us readers know what effect the dreadful experience had on those few men who lived to tell the tale. He also delivers painless lessons on the wonder and weirdness of whales, their physiology and social systems. Equally, we learn much about a specific place and time in history - nineteenth-century Nantucket - and we can see how fundamentalism, optimism, casual racism, courage and materialism are bred n the American bone. Review by Irma Kurtz (Kirkus UK)

About the Author
Nathaniel Philbrick is a historian and broadcaster who has written extensively about sailing. He is director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies on Nantucket Island, and a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association. He was a consultant on the movie Moby Dick. Aged 41, he has lived on Nantucket with his wife and two children since 1986.

Customer Reviews

Whale sinks whaleship: 90-day ordeal at sea
Perhaps the highest praise I can bestow upon this book is to say that I can't ever remember being so thoroughly absorbed in any work of non-fiction. Before I knew where I was I had read half the book and had to pace myself for the remainder to make it last! Of the many books of maritime exploration, adventure, mutiny and war that I have read -- even Caroline Alexander's The Bounty, which I rate highly -- no other author came close to Mr Philbrick's ability to paint a picture with words of the sea - to make me feel as if I were there on these whaleboats sharing the dreadful experience of these shipwrecked men as they slowly shed their humanity and became animals. If you know nothing about the sea, if you've never left solid ground or even seen the sea, this book will still appeal to you as a very human story of shared suffering and the lengths that the human body and mind will go to in order to cling to life under the harshest conditions and in the most unforgiving and merciless environment on the planet.

Riveting
...The best read I have had all year. I have now purchased a further 8 copies of this book for other people, and it will no doubt be given to a few more this Christmas. You'd expect this historical non fiction to be dry, and indeed the first chapter of Nantucket whaling ship history may well give you a hint that your initial suspicions were confirmed but once they set sail - what an adventure! The coincidences, the survival, the power of the writing and the storytelling where Philbrick manages to avoid creating fictional dialogue for his sailors and sticks to the facts while making some suppositions of his own. You could not put this book down once started. An incredible tale and all the more amazing for being true. The cover mentions Moby Dick's reliance on the Essex's story for its own inspiration but I found Philbrick's book far more compellingly told than the overblown and hysterically dramatic classic novel. If I had to choose between the two, I would read Philbrick's tale a second time and forget the woeful Moby Dick.

Stay on Dry Land!
This is an absolutely fantastic book detailing the horrific experiences of a whaleship crew cast adrift on the ocean. It is so well written you can feel the claustrophobia and utter hopelessness that these poor 19th Century mariners must have felt. The story just builds and builds and you will not be able to put this book down, you can feel the shivers running up and down your spine. It's a great read and I would recommend it to ANYONE be they interested in historical fact or not. It could not have come from the pen of a writer of fiction as only true stories leave you this nervous/breathless and truly plumb the depths of the human psyche. Brilliant.