Wreck of the Whale Ship Essex: The Complete Illustrated Edition: The Extraordinary and Distressing Memoir that Inspired Herman Melville’s by Owen Chase (review)

One can readily find elsewhere Chase’s account of his horrifying three months at sea after a sperm whale sank the Essex, but the varied, abundant illustrations make this book a worthy addition to the Melville bookshelf, especially for teachers of Moby-Dick eager to rouse interest in the bygone world of American whaling. Here one finds the usual nineteenth-century lithographs and oil paintings of whale ships and whale hunts, along with a pleasing array of visuals: a map of the route traveled by Chase’s lifeboat, an 1851 whale chart, pages from cabin boy Thomas Nickerson’s diary, whale ship diagrams, Rockwell Kent illustrations, a daguerreotype of New Bedford whalemen, and plenty of photographs: the interiors and exteriors of whaling ships, sperm whales and their skeletons, the Charles W. Morgan of yesteryear and today, whaling tools, scrimshaw, and the oldest surviving sea biscuit. Without announcing itself as a tie-in, the book anticipates the December 2015 release of the film version of Nathaniel Philbrick’s Essex-based In the Heart of the Sea (2000), directed by Ron Howard. Display prominently and use as an au courant conversational springboard to Melville-related topics.