Stove by a Whale: Owen Chase and the Essex

Notes

NOTES PREFACE 1. See Appendix A. Melville consistently spelled the name Chace, as did some branches of the Chase family, but not Owen's. 2. The Essex is the first ship whose loss can unquestionably be attributed to an attack by a whale. About some earlier shipwrecks-most notably that of the Union in 1807-the evidence is insufficient to determine whether the ships ran into whales or the whales attacked the ships. See Deborah C. Andrews, "Attacks of Whales on Ships: A Checklist," [Melville Society] Extracts, May 1974, pp. 3-17. CHAPTER ONE 1. From chap. 14, "Nantucket," of Moby-Dick, written before Melville had visited Nantucket. Moby-Dick, ed. Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), p. 62. 2. The sources used here for the history of whaling are Alexander Starbuck, History of the American Whale Fishery from Its Earliest Inception to the Year 1876 (New York: Argosy-Antiquarian, 1964); Obed Macy, The History of Nantucket (New York: Research Reprints, 1970); Alexander Starbuck, The History of Nantucket, County, Island and Town (Boston, C. E. Goodspeed & Co., 1924). 3. Reprinted in Starbuck, Whale Fishery, 1:39. 4. Vital Records of Nantucket to the Year 1850: Published by the New England Historical Genealogical Society at the Robert Henry Eddy Memorial Rooms at the Charge of the Eddy Town Record Fund (Boston, 1928), 1:204,2:527. 5. Recollections ofJames Chase recounted to his daughter-in-law, Irene Chase. 6. Scrapbook, "Nantucket Heroes of the Sea," kept by Will Gardner and assembled by the Nantucket Historical Association, 1955; in Peter Foulger Museum. No pagination; quote is from section on WaIter Nelson Chase, Owen's grandson. 7. The Yarmouth Chase genealogies are taken from The Chase Family of Yarmouth (Yarmouthport, Mass.: C. W. Swift, 19q) and George Whitefield 254 NOTES Chase, Genealogy ofa Portion of the Descendants of William Chase, Who Came to America in 7630, and Died in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, May, 7659 (Washington, D.C., 1886). 8. Here appears a remarkable discrepancy between The Chase Family of Yarmouth and George Whitefield Chase: The latter gives June 28, 1707, as the marriage date of Isaac Chase and Charity O'Kelley, a date that is unlikely, to say the least, if Desire's birth date-on which the two volumes agree-is correct: she was probably not born thirty-four years after her parents were married. 9. He is described as "yeoman" or "husbandman" in a variety of deeds: County of Nantucket Unregistered Deeds, liber 12, p. 294; tiber 26, p. 5, etc. In the Death Records of the N~ntucket town clerk's office he is described as a yeoman (vol. for 1843-49, p. 168). 10. There is unusual confusion over Owen Chase's birth date, part of it arising from the classic error of transposing the numbers indicating day and month, and part arising from conflicting reports of the year. The Folger Records and one of the entries in the Vital Records of Nantucket give July 10, 1796, as the date (the 1840 Nantucket census gives merely July 1796). The 1850 Nantucket census and another entry in the Vital Records of Nantucket give October 7, 1797 (the 1855 census merely gives the year 1797). The 1821 crew list of the Florida gives Owen's age as twenty-four, indicating a 1797 birth date. Owen himself has resolved the October 7 vs. July 10 conflict by noting in the 1836-40 log of the Charles Carroll under October 7, 1836, that that day was his birthday. The date that has secured the most support as Owen's birth date is October 7, 1796; it is the date indicated by the earliest record of Owen's age, Obed Macy's 1810 census records, and the last record of his age, his obituary in the Inquirer and Mirror, March 13, 1869. It is also the date indicated by the 1836 and 1865 Nantucket census. The census records cited are found both in the Nantucket town clerk's office and in the Peter Foulger Museum, except for Obed Macy's 1810 records and the 1855 census, which are in the Peter Foulger only. See Appendix H for some conflicts in birth dates of Owen's brothers and sisters. 11. Grace Brown Gardner, Scrapbook #39, "Nantucket Schools, General," in Peter Foulger Museum. 12. In the Peter Foulger Museum. 13. Baptist Church Records for 1839 ff., the only volume of these records that falls within Owen Chase's life; the Record Book of...