In the heart of the sea

In the heart of the sea : the tragedy of the whaleship Essex / Nathaniel Philbrick.-- New York : Viking, 2000.
xvi, 302 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
Bibliography: p. 279-289
Includes index
ISBN: 0670891576

1.Essex (Whaleship) 2. Shipwrecks -- Pacific Ocean.

910.9164

On November 20, 1820 the Essex was sunk by a furious eighty-ton sperm whale a thousand miles west of Galapagos. This was the beginning of a harrowing sea voyage of 4,500 nautical miles. The crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, decided on a longer eastern course, back to South America. In doing so, they became the cannibals they wanted to avoid.

Three months later two of the saviors were picked up by another Nantucket whaleship the Dauphin off the West Coast of South America. The two men, sunburned and covered with sores were crouching in a twenty-five foot whaleboat rigged with a makeshift sale. Oddly enough, they resisted rescue at first. They feared the crew of the Dauphin might deprive them of their most precious possessions, the gnawed bones of their shipmates from which they were sucking the marrow.

Drawing on the accounts of the survivors, modern cetology, oceanography, psychology, physiology, navigation, and the history of Nantucket Philbrick has written an extremely readable and fascinating story of survival.