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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downey. And Sarah and

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Speaker 1: I were talking books earlier, like we do. And I

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Speaker 1: keep meaning to read Twenty Leagues under the Sea because

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Speaker 1: I hear maybe a gnar whale makes an appearance. I

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Speaker 1: don't even remember that. It's been so long since I

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Speaker 1: read that book. I was probably like ten years old

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Speaker 1: or something. My aunt Kim gave me a big batch

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Speaker 1: of Jules Verne books and I raced through them. I

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Speaker 1: remember my favorite one though, was The Mysterious Island. That

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Speaker 1: was a very cool book. And I've been calling Sarah

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Speaker 1: steampunk since we went to dragon Con and we're talking

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Speaker 1: about the influences of Jules Verne on the steampunk movement.

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Speaker 1: But he would be a good podcast subject, she swears

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Speaker 1: she is not. There's this other great American novel that

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Speaker 1: I keep meaning to read, Moby Dick. And when you

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Speaker 1: love a book enough, it often inspires you to learn more.

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Speaker 1: At least it does us um about the author, about

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Speaker 1: the time period, about the circumstances surrounding the writing of

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Speaker 1: the book, and it's extra exciting when a beloved book

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Speaker 1: has its basis in fact, and that is the case

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Speaker 1: with Moby Dick and a whale ship called the Essex.

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Speaker 1: So if you were a nineteenth century elementary schooler, you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't have missed this story in history class. But somehow

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Speaker 1: or another, it has been lost over the years, and

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Speaker 1: that's a shame because it's a really crazy story. So

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Speaker 1: we're going to give you some context because it's what

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Speaker 1: makes history makes sense. And when I think Nantucket, I

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Speaker 1: think Nantucket reads because I know a lot of very

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Speaker 1: puppy people um who have weddings involving lobster. But our

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Speaker 1: story does not take place in modern times, and no

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Speaker 1: whalers wore shirts with an actual whale logo on the

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Speaker 1: whale Yeah, vineyard vines. Whaling today is generally not considered

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Speaker 1: a noble pursuit, but you know, hey, neither is eating

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Speaker 1: sled dogs. But it worked at the time, right. The

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Speaker 1: economy of Nantucket for a really long time there was

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Speaker 1: based on whale hunting, and it makes the town a

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Speaker 1: very very wealthy place. So Native Americans in New England

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Speaker 1: were known to butcher dead whales that had washed up

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Speaker 1: on or near shore, but no one got into boats

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Speaker 1: to hunt the creatures until the seventeenth century. It's a

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Speaker 1: little crazy to do that. Well, you're going to find

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Speaker 1: out they were searching for right whales, which was an

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Speaker 1: actual designation of some whales um but they were also

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Speaker 1: known as the right ones to kill because these baileeen

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Speaker 1: whales stuck close to the shore and Nantucketers and Indians

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Speaker 1: would go shore whaling together guests who was captain, and

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Speaker 1: these little boats. And according to the new Bedford Whaling Museum,

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Speaker 1: the whalers harpooned their prey, and this instrument that they

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Speaker 1: harpooned them with had ropes attached to it that ended

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Speaker 1: in wooden floats, and the whale would exhaust itself pulling

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Speaker 1: these floats, and when it got tired enough, the whalers

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Speaker 1: could lance it and take it back to the shore

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Speaker 1: to harvest the blubber and the whale bone. So we've

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Speaker 1: got to establish what you use all this stuff for.

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Speaker 1: The blubber is boiled down to make oil, which was

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Speaker 1: used for a long time, and lamps and candles, and

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Speaker 1: I mean it was it was how people use light.

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Speaker 1: The whale bone was used for stays, and we saw

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Speaker 1: kind of a lot of corsets that dragon con but I,

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Speaker 1: for one, don't really miss the days of course the

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Speaker 1: tree they're just Scarlett O'Hara. But whaling didn't become a

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Speaker 1: really big business until the eighteenth century, and that's when sailors,

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Speaker 1: after hunting those right whales almost to extinction, realized that

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Speaker 1: there were much bigger whales further out. Those are the

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Speaker 1: sperm whales. And sperm whales are deep divers like minar whale,

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Speaker 1: and they're the biggest toothed whale. They like squid, and

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Speaker 1: they're in every ocean, sometimes dive being three thousand, three

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Speaker 1: hundred feet down according to the American Cetacean Society, and

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Speaker 1: they're not usually white. Sorry Melville, but the characteristic that

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Speaker 1: most interested the whalers was what was in a sperm

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Speaker 1: whales head. No, not its brain. It's sperm sti. So

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Speaker 1: this definitely requires a little explanation. It's called the sperm

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Speaker 1: steti because people thought it was the whale semen. It's not.

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Speaker 1: But it's really this type of wax and it didn't

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Speaker 1: have a smell, so it could be used in makeup

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Speaker 1: and candles and used to lubricate machines, and supposedly those

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Speaker 1: candles burned brightest, and according to Encyclopedia Britannica quote, the

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Speaker 1: former official unit of illumination, the candle power, was defined

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Speaker 1: as the light given off by a candle of pure

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Speaker 1: spermatty burning at a rate of seven point seven seven

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Speaker 1: six grams twenty grains per hour. So there you have

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Speaker 1: a candle power and the stuff in a whale's head.

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Speaker 1: But if you were really, really lucky, you might also

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Speaker 1: find some ambergris, which is this weird stuff that forms

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Speaker 1: in the intestines of sperm whales and it can come

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Speaker 1: out either end, but the bigger pieces of it come

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Speaker 1: out of a whale's mouth, which is why it's often

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Speaker 1: known as whale vomit. And squid beaks are sometimes found

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Speaker 1: in it, So maybe the ambergris is a way of

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Speaker 1: protecting the whales insides. But when it first comes out

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Speaker 1: it's really gross and smells like dung according to some scientists.

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Speaker 1: But if you find it in the ocean after it's

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Speaker 1: been there for a while, it smells fantastic and it's

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Speaker 1: used in the best of the best perfumes because it

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Speaker 1: makes the scent stick. According to an article on our

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Speaker 1: site by Julia Lytton, and some people say it's also

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Speaker 1: an aphrodisiac. I have to wonder how people discover the

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Speaker 1: uses for things like this. For for both of the

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Speaker 1: things we just mentioned that sound really gross in one case,

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Speaker 1: kind of stinky. I mean, how do you figure out

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Speaker 1: I'm not getting whale bomb for your birthday, Sarah? How

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Speaker 1: about that? Maybe just a nice perfume? Give me the

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Speaker 1: converted form. When whaling was at its peak, Ambergris was

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Speaker 1: literally worth its weight in gold. So this is a

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Speaker 1: big deal. Let's get back to our whale hunters though. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So the island of Nantucket is the heart of the

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Speaker 1: whaling industry, or it was at the time. You didn't

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Speaker 1: like my jokes and having the outline so that it

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Speaker 1: was the blubber of the whaling industry. Ha ha, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's From eighteen hundred to eighteen forty it was considered

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Speaker 1: the whaling capital of the world. And according to the

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Speaker 1: Nantucket Island Chamber of Commerce. Uh, that's that's pretty big designation.

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Speaker 1: I'd say others put its heyday sometime between seventeen fifty

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Speaker 1: and eighteen fifty, but this was it. This was where

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Speaker 1: everything happened Nantucket. Nobody was better at hunting the sperm whale,

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Speaker 1: and the quakers of the island had a corner on

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Speaker 1: the market, and therefore they had a corner and the money.

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Speaker 1: So to go farther and farther in the ocean, whalers

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Speaker 1: would need bigger and better ships, and also a way

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Speaker 1: to deal with the blubber and such on board instead

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Speaker 1: of hauling it back to shore, because you know, rot

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Speaker 1: before they got there. So we will introduce the try works,

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Speaker 1: which was um this combination of two pots known as

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Speaker 1: tripots in a furnace, and that was a way that

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Speaker 1: you could boil your oil on board a ship, and

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Speaker 1: fresh blubber made better oil anyway, So this was a huge,

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Speaker 1: huge step to process the whale on the ship. You

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Speaker 1: don't have the rotten carcass anymore, you don't have the

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Speaker 1: thousands of pounds of whale meat that you're toting or

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Speaker 1: carried back. You can stay out there for a long

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Speaker 1: time condensing the blubber into the precious oil. But you

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Speaker 1: would think if you've got these giant pots of oil

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Speaker 1: and also a lot of fire, it might be a

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Speaker 1: bit dangerous. And it was fires on board of course

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Speaker 1: we're very possible, but more dangerous were the whales themselves,

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Speaker 1: because don't go around chasing giant whales in tiny little

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Speaker 1: boats and expect always to come out of already seeing

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Speaker 1: what whales can do to ponies in a recent episode.

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Speaker 1: And so you can imagine Nathaniel philbrick in in the

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Speaker 1: Heart of the Sea, which is an excellent book that

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Speaker 1: I just started reading, but it's pretty much the definitive

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Speaker 1: account of the Essex related that in eighteen ten there

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Speaker 1: were forty seven fatherless children on Nantucket, you know, pretty

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Speaker 1: small island, and a quarter of the women over twenty

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Speaker 1: three were widows. So you sent your men off to

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Speaker 1: see knowing that there was a very good chance they

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Speaker 1: might not come back. And by the time we get

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Speaker 1: to the American Revolution, these ships are going further than

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Speaker 1: they have ever been before, to the Falkland Islands, to

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Speaker 1: the west coast of Africa. Um. Other ports were starting

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Speaker 1: to become players in the whaling industry, like New Bedford. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but Nantucket was still the leader. And the American Revolution,

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Speaker 1: of course slow things down a little bit. It makes

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Speaker 1: sending out ships more difficult. And same deal with the

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Speaker 1: War of eighteen twelve but by the Treaty of Ghent

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Speaker 1: Uh it was time to go back to see and

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Speaker 1: that was in eighteen fourteen, and it's in August eighteen

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Speaker 1: nineteen that a particular ship set sail, the Essex. And

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Speaker 1: just to give you a little about whaling ships, all

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Speaker 1: of these details come from the new Bedford Whaling Museum

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Speaker 1: as well. Um Our usual whaling ship was about three

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Speaker 1: hundred tons and it had the try works on board.

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Speaker 1: Like we mentioned before, the Essex was a little bit

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Speaker 1: smaller than that, and each whale ship carried three to

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Speaker 1: five small whale boats with it because obviously you can't

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Speaker 1: chase a whale with a menship now, and there were

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Speaker 1: planks on the starboard side so men could stand there

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Speaker 1: to cut up the whales. So I'm just you know,

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Speaker 1: if you try to picture it, this ship out in

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Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere, these tiny boats chasing after whales,

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Speaker 1: this the fire and the oil all on board, and

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Speaker 1: men cutting up these gigantic whales on a ship, I'm

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Speaker 1: just imagine, and how flippery everything would be with the

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Speaker 1: greasy whale blubber everywhere and the the rocking ship. And

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Speaker 1: it's easy to see why this was such a dangerous profession.

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Speaker 1: I'm so clumsy to begin with. I'm pretty sure I

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Speaker 1: would slide from one end to the other and go

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Speaker 1: directly overboard. So the further these ships were out at sea,

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Speaker 1: of course, the longer the journeys were, and oftentimes it

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Speaker 1: would it would take years for one mission. Um ships

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Speaker 1: carried enough provisions for about four years, and they would

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Speaker 1: usually have approximately thirty men on board, and the men

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Speaker 1: weren't paid a wage, so it wasn't like you got

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Speaker 1: a big chunk of money up front or got some

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Speaker 1: sort of hourly salary for the amount of time you worked. Instead,

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Speaker 1: they got a share in the profits when they came

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Speaker 1: back to shore with all their wear whale oil. So

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Speaker 1: it was a pretty good incentive to kill as many

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Speaker 1: whales as possible, even if it meant staying out for

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Speaker 1: a really long time, even if it meant risking your life, right,

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Speaker 1: it was worth the risk for them. So the Essex

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Speaker 1: set sail with a lot of Nantucket men and also

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Speaker 1: some black men and some off islanders. Nantucket men were

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Speaker 1: very snobby and they would have preferred to have all

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Speaker 1: Nantucket men aboard, but they sort of ran out to

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Speaker 1: be because a lot of them were dying in the

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Speaker 1: real Some of the off islanders were called coups, which

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Speaker 1: was quite an insult. And they had planned for a

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Speaker 1: trip of two to three years, but they knew they'd

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Speaker 1: have to go even farther than Cape Horn where others

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Speaker 1: were going. Um. Some said that even the whales off

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Speaker 1: of Chili and Peru were completely gone. So the new

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Speaker 1: place to go was way way out in the Pacific,

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Speaker 1: farther than pretty much every whaling ship had ever gone. Um.

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Speaker 1: But that's where the money was. This quote almost untraversed ocean,

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Speaker 1: according to first mate Owen Chase. So they went, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the trip didn't go well. Almost from the start

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Speaker 1: there were nearly blown over, they lost boats, they weren't

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Speaker 1: seeing whales, and then it got much much worse on

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Speaker 1: November and okay, so the sailors finally saw a pot

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Speaker 1: of whales and sent two of the ship's boats to

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Speaker 1: to chase the pod to get some oil and everything.

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Speaker 1: But the cabin boys spotted something that was really really strange,

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Speaker 1: an eighty five ft eighty ton whale way too close

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Speaker 1: to the boat. It was about a hundred yards away,

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Speaker 1: then thirty five yards away, and it was heading straight

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Speaker 1: toward them, and I tried to turn the boat, but

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Speaker 1: there wasn't enough time. It hit them and then went

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Speaker 1: under scraped the bottom of the boat, resurfaced, looked at

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Speaker 1: them for a second, and came at them again at

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Speaker 1: six knots, directly toward the boat. And we have a

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Speaker 1: quote from first mate Owen Chase, who would later write

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Speaker 1: a book about his experiences called Narrative of the Most

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Speaker 1: Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex. They

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Speaker 1: had some good, very descriptive title. Then, yes, we're not

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Speaker 1: allowed to have titles that long. Our producer won't let

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Speaker 1: us quote. I could distinctly see him smile, his jaw together,

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Speaker 1: as if distracted with rage and fury. I turned around

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Speaker 1: and saw him about one rods directly ahead of us,

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Speaker 1: coming down, apparently with twice his ordinary speed, And to

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Speaker 1: me at that moment it appeared with tenfold fury and

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Speaker 1: vengeance in his aspect. So according to him, the captain

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Speaker 1: cried out, my god, Mr Chase, what is the matter,

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Speaker 1: And he answers, we have been stove by a whale.

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Speaker 1: So the ship has a huge hole in the bottom

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Speaker 1: and it sinks quickly. Where are we at we're in

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Speaker 1: the middle of the Pacific and a whale has just

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Speaker 1: attacked us. So luckily, unlike the Titanic, they had these

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Speaker 1: little whale boats in good working order with supplies on board.

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Speaker 1: We've got twenty one men and three boats, and they

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Speaker 1: were divi gide it up according to status. Among the boats.

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Speaker 1: Captain George Pollard Jr. Had the Nantucket men, the first

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Speaker 1: mate had some more Nantucket men, some black men, and

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Speaker 1: one off Islander, and the third mate had all off

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Speaker 1: Islanders and black men. And if they ate and drank

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Speaker 1: practically nothing, they might just might have enough supplies for

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Speaker 1: sixty days. Their supplies were two casks of bread, a

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Speaker 1: hundred nine gallons of water, musket and powder, tools, and

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Speaker 1: a few turtles for eating, not for pets. No, So

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Speaker 1: they have two options, and the first was to head

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Speaker 1: to the Tahitian Islands, which were about one thousand, two

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Speaker 1: hundred miles away, but they were afraid that if they

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Speaker 1: went there they might run into cannibals. So, yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: that's interesting. So they decided instead on another plan to

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Speaker 1: head south and perhaps the winds would carry them all

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Speaker 1: the way to Chili. But the journey wasn't easy. There

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Speaker 1: were all these storms. There's of course sun just beating

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Speaker 1: down all the time. Their sharks, I mean, maybe you

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Speaker 1: never know, you might even run into another pot of

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Speaker 1: whales again. And seawater got into the hardtack. So I'm

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Speaker 1: sure it was so delicious to begin with you now,

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Speaker 1: so it's it's immediately a really bad time in these

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Speaker 1: little boats. And the boats landed in the Pitcairn Islands

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Speaker 1: for a time, but unfortunately not the same one as

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Speaker 1: our guys from the bounty did, because there wasn't much

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Speaker 1: there besides water and some birds, and certainly not enough

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Speaker 1: to feed all of them. But three men decided to

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Speaker 1: stay and the rest headed back to the sea. But

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Speaker 1: they had run out of the supplies they had, and

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Speaker 1: it was clear that, you know, disaster and despair are

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Speaker 1: on the way. They began to die. And when the

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Speaker 1: first men died, they were given a proper burial at sea,

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Speaker 1: you know, a respectful burial um. But that didn't last

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Speaker 1: for much longer. The other men are even eating their shoes,

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Speaker 1: but soon starvation and dehydration set in along with these hallucinations.

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Speaker 1: And if that doesn't sound too terrible to you, this

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Speaker 1: is Phil Brick's description of what happens when you remain

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Speaker 1: dehydrated for so long. Quote, the tongue swells to such

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Speaker 1: proportions that it squeezes past the jaw. The eyelids crack,

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Speaker 1: and the eyeballs begin to weep tears of blood. So

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Speaker 1: what are they going to do? And this is where

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Speaker 1: the really terrible stuff comes in, because when the next

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Speaker 1: man died, they did what they had to do to

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Speaker 1: stay alive. They ate him. And here's a quote from Chase.

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Speaker 1: We separated the limbs from the body and cut all

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Speaker 1: the flesh from the bones, after which we opened the body,

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Speaker 1: took out the heart, closed it again, sewing it up

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Speaker 1: as decently as we could, and then committed it to

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Speaker 1: the sea. And every man who died off to that

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Speaker 1: suffered the same fate. But then no one died for

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Speaker 1: a while, and lots were chosen, and a man was

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Speaker 1: murdered and devoured by his comrades. Six men in total

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Speaker 1: were eaten, and then off the coast of Chili in February,

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Speaker 1: an American whale ship came up against this boat that

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Speaker 1: looked a little bit funny, and when they looked into it,

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Speaker 1: they found two men sucking on human bones. They were

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Speaker 1: covered in salt and blood and sores. They're disoriented, their

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Speaker 1: wild eyed, they didn't know who they were. They even

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Speaker 1: tried to hide from their rescuers, you know, crouching against

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Speaker 1: the sides of the boat. And these were two of

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Speaker 1: the survivors, and eight men survived. Total, five were rescued

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Speaker 1: from the sea, three from the island, and all of

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Speaker 1: sudden done. They had been at sea for ninety three days,

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Speaker 1: and according to Philbrick, they sailed four thousand, five hundred

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Speaker 1: miles across the Pacific. That's more than Bly after the bounty.

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Speaker 1: That's more than Shackleton to South Georgia. Owen Chase wrote

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Speaker 1: about the experience, and so did the cabin boy Thomas Nickerson.

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Speaker 1: Um but it was a very famous ordeal. Pretty quickly,

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Speaker 1: and Herman Melville read the story of the Essex while

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Speaker 1: aboard and New Bedford whale ship, and he said, the

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Speaker 1: reading of this wondrous story upon the landless sea, and

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Speaker 1: so close to the very latitude of the shipwreck, had

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Speaker 1: a surprising effect on me. Moby Dick was published in

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Speaker 1: eighteen fifty one, and it was a flop, and Chase

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Speaker 1: went on to captain his own whale ship but later

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Speaker 1: he went insane and stored crackers in his attic just

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Speaker 1: in case, and that brings us to Listener Mail. So

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Speaker 1: today's edition of Listener Mail is real mail, and in

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Speaker 1: fact it is this amazing handmade card from Haley. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: lots of people have have suggested the Whaleship Essex, but

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Speaker 1: Haley was the first to do so. She recommended that

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Speaker 1: Phil Brick book um and yeah, she made this card

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Speaker 1: with a chip and it has the date in November

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Speaker 1: whaleship at six funk triple exclamation point. But the best

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Speaker 1: part is the angry sperm whale, very angry. He even

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Speaker 1: has an eyebrow. He's slanted eyebrows, so you can see

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Speaker 1: the fury and the vengeance in his visage. And it's

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Speaker 1: pretty clear that he's headed at the ship at approximately

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Speaker 1: six month. And she is the one to m She's

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Speaker 1: the one who swayed our opinion and finally decided that

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Speaker 1: finally decided our minds that this is something that we

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Speaker 1: should do. So thank you to Haley and for all

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Speaker 1: the others who suggested the Whaleship Essex. If you would

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Speaker 1: like to send us an email with some topic ideas,

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Speaker 1: where its history podcast at how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: We're also on Twitter at missed in History and we

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Speaker 1: have a Facebook fan page. Should come find us and

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Speaker 1: keep up with what we're doing. And if you're interested

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Speaker 1: in Ambergris, we have an article called how can whale

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Speaker 1: vomit help Me Retire? That you can find if you

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Speaker 1: search our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and be sure to check

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Speaker 1: out the stuff you Missed in History Glass blog on

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