Stove by a Whale: Owen Chase and the Essex

4. Next Lowering: Owen Chase after the Essex George Pollard, Jr. The Other Survivors

Chapter Four NEXT LOWERING OWEN CHASE AFTER THE ESSEX IN C HAP T E R 23 of Moby-Dick, "The Lee Shore," a seaman named Bulkington, just in from a four-year voyage, signs up within days to ship out again. Melville exalts him for repudiating all havens and comforts and realizing that it is only in the storm that he can survive the storm. Bulkington's gesture is abruptly romantic and seems to be larger than life, but many seamen without a romantic bone in their bodies have done what Bulkington did, not always within a few days but fairly soon after coming back from the sea. Just how many of the Essex survivors returned to sea we cannot be sure, but the two about whom we know most, the first mate and the captain , did. They were Bulkingtons in behavior if not in motive-the sea was what they lived from, and it would take more than a dramatic shipwreck to keep them away from it. On June 11, 1821, the Eagle, Capt. William H. Coffin, arrived in Nantucket and disembarked half of the eight Essex survivors, Owen Chase, Benjamin Lawrence, Thomas Nickerson, and Charles Ramsdell.1 At the moment the ship docked, as we have seen in chapter 3, no one on Nantucket had reason to assume that Chase, Lawrence, or Nickerson was alive. These three getting off the ship were walking up out of a watery grave into the arms of their startled, mourning families. Phebe Ann Chase, fourteen months old now, saw her father for the first time. The little family went off to its home; the other three 120 STOVE BY A WHALE seamen, all of them unmarried, were taken home by their families; and Nantucket ingested the news. A melodramatic tale about the survivors' return appeared in a magazine article years later; it told of a large hushed throng on shore meeting the Eagle and parting like the crowd at the prison door for Hester Prynne as the survivors passed, stared at and ungreeted, to trudge alone to their homes.2 Non evero rna eben trovato, one might say, if only it were ben trovato . When on August 5 the Two Brothers arrived in Nantucket with Captain Pollard, all the living Nantucketers from the Essex were home. It is clear that both Captain Pollard and First Mate Chase were making preparations to go to sea again-before the year was out each of them would be back on a ship with his old rank. But Owen Chase used the summer months to write the story of the Essex that we have read. The literary history of this Narrative is saved for chapter 5, but it may be observed that, whatever else is known or unknown about it, the book was written quickly: by October 31 the printer registered the title with the court clerk for the Southern District of New York. Owen had a half-year with his wife and daughter before going back to sea. When he did sail it was not from Nantucket but from New Bedford. He signed on the whaler Florida, Capt. Simeon Price, as first mate and sailed from New Bedford around December 20, 1821. For the first time on extant records there appears a physical description of Owen Chase: the crew list of the Florida describes Owen as twenty-four years old, five feet, ten inches tall, dark complexioned and brown haired. The crew was about the same size as the crew of the Essex; no one on the ship but Owen was from Nantucket. The ship was out just short of two years, returning on November 26, 1823, with 2,000 barrels of oil. It had cruised the off-shore ground, had stopped at Coquimbo and Payta, at each of which it had had a desertion; it probably touched other ports as well. On August 11, 1823, it spoke the Triton off Tumbes, the same ship that had brought back the first reports of the loss of the Essex. 3 When the Florida discharged its crew and officers in New Bedford , Owen crossed over to Nantucket and rejoined his family. NEXT LOWERING 121 Phebe Ann was three and a half now, and there was once again a tot in the house who had never seen her father, year-and-a-half-old Lydia. This time Owen stayed in Nantucket almost two years. On September...