we are told the designer was not told she was aware. he donated it and it was also a nieces must -- it was also in the smithsonian. you can see the military. it is interesting because in the foreground you can see pictures. that is the story of the national billing museum. celebrate the built world. government office building has come to represent the inaugural events of each president for the last 40 years.

>> american history tv is on social media. follow us on c-span history. >> nathaniel talks about his book, in the heart of the sea, the tragedy of whaleship ethics. following an attack by us firm whale. as they spent three months to reach mainland south america before being rescued. they hosted this event and provided the video. >> good evening and welcome to the nantucket museum. the association is pleased to bring you our socially distance commemoration.

my name is michael harrison. we are thrilled to be this evening in conversation with nathaniel, longtime islander here. matt and his wife arrived. he is a historian and has written numerous books about the island in the year 2000. it won the national book award for nonfiction. since then, he is going on to write a number of books, a very good book about the u.s. exploring expedition. a whole variety of other interesting topics, branching off from -- we are thrilled that

everybody can join us this evening. this evening of the essex tragedy is a near and dear story to nantucket and to nantucket's identity as a historic whaling port. they nantucket whaling museum is a unique place to tell the story. we preserve the history of nantucket and we have a lot of collections related to the story . it is in our bones so we are really thrilled to be able to have all of you join us this evening for our conversation about the essex. [laughter] the basic thing, we are here to talk about the essex the question of the evening.

what are the basic things everyone should know about the essex tragedy? guest: the essex left in 1819, the year after the pacific national bank was built. she was old and had a first time captain, first mate owen chase. the cabin boy was thomas nickerson. they departed and headed for the pacific. it was a normal whaling voyage, not a very successful one. they made their way up to the west coast of south america and they decided to venture out farther. after a stop at the galapagos,

they were 3000 miles from the set -- from the coast of south america where they cited a huge spring well, 85 feet long. --sperm whale. 85 feet long. when you realize the ship was 85 feet long. one of the whale boats was damaged and first mate owen chase drag that boat. they were of pursuing whales and the cabin boy, all of 15 years old, was at the helm steering when this 85 foot long whale appeared. they did not think much of it

because never before in the history of whaling, this whale had never attacked a boat. it slammed into the side of the ship. it drove the ship backwards and crush the bow into an eggshell. the men took to their whale boats and they all gathered. captain eventually arrived. they had not seen what happened and said to chase, what is the matter? these were men of few words. chase said we have been stole by a whale. if you do not know about the essex, you are probably familiar with moby dick. this inspired the climax of that

great american novel. where moby dick and is just the beginning of the essex. rumors of cannibals in the islands to the west and the pacific. they decided to go for it, 3000 miles away. an impossible voyage and the great irony. eventually only a few of the will votes would be cited by rescuers. three others were left on henderson island and when news came to nantucket and the rest of the country, this was big news. this was before the american west had become the wilderness.

the sea was the wilderness. owen chase would write an account of it, probably ghostwritten, that would become renowned across the country and in the world. this was a tale that people in nantucket were not particularly proud of it because it was a voyage that went bad, but it was was a story of all sort of fascination for those outside of nantucket. this was a story i realized i needed to write about. host: there are some interesting things in this disaster that come to mind as you are retelling it. on the one hand, this part of the pacific had only been discovered by american whalers a year or two before.

this was not really part of the notion that many of their brethren had been to. they were more comfortable on the coast of south america but there was money to be made and they ventured out. they were sort of in the unknown, taking a risk but here they are cast into their boats with their ship wrecked. imagine us, being cast into a boat in the middle of the pacific. you are a reputable sailor while i would be at my wits end. our professional sailors are able to salvage things from the wreck, rake the rowing boats to sail, professional skills they bring to actually save themselves.

the great irony or tragedy of this, they are unmatched by the circumstances. they make a decision not to go to the nearest islands because they have heard there are cannibals there. something slightly provincial of nantucket or limitation in their knowledge but -- and that is where they go. prevailing winds for 3000 miles and not enough water and food. that does not work very well. guest: what i thought long and hard and try to examine it in my research. how did they do this? what were they thinking? this is a story of survival. it is your fears that drive you. it is very hard to think rationally. the fears they all had was the unknown pacific.

this was very early in pacific whaling. the only thing they heard about these islands were rumors of cannibals. they were very adventurous and taken it farther than anyone else when it came to the exploration of the world, but they were also very conservative. unless they could hear it from someone they knew, they did not trust that information. one thing they did know was that the sea, whale boats and whale ships. here is a whaleboat right here. this boat is from a later era. on 25 feet long. they built up their size so a large wave would not flooded. these books were not equipped

with sales -- these boats were not equipped with sails and off they went, finally falling into. for me, the story of the essex is a tale of human survival and as you alluded to, these guys had tremendous skills but ultimately, it was nature who called the shots. host: the irony that we see in the story doubt as modern observers because they do not want to go to certain islands because they have heard of cannibalism and they resort to cannibalism themselves. they are in a boat for three months. that is an entire summer! the galapagos islands --

guest: it was common to roundup galapagos tortoises, huge creatures that could weigh over 100 pounds. these galapagos tortoises could live for months or as long as a year without any food or water and provide the group with wonderful meat so when this whale attacked their ship, they had all these galapagos tortoises. they had some bread, some water, they did not have a lot of water and off they went. the closest i could get to getting my head imaginatively around what they were going through, was to think in terms of science fiction. this is like a spaceship.

the pacific was space for them. here they are, out there, doing their best. host: they know that there are other ships out there, they are hoping maybe they will pass one but imagine sailing through an area the size of texas, hoping you are going to pass, one of the 60 or 70 well ships out there. they did not pass. guest: they felt that if everything went right, if the winds worked perfectly, they might be able to get to the coast of south america and a month and a half. everything would go wrong.

they were always hopeful that someone would discover them and that did not happen and they began to run out of water. they were dying of dehydration. an island they were not aware of , they misnamed it. you cannot make this stuff up. on the verge of death, they sail up to this island and there is no water until a spring high and low tide and that low tide bubbling from a rock that is usually submerged, is freshwater . that saves them for now but they would realize. this is almost a metaphor for the human race on this planet.

they realize they are killing off all of the wildlife that they could sustain themselves with. if they stayed for any length of time, they would ultimately starve so they decide we have to push on and it is then when three men, a couple of them from cape cod and one was an englishman, this was an ingrown group. they would stay, and very emotional parting, and ultimately they would be rescued because the survivors would send a rescue ship there. another great irony, it turned out that that rock, as the tide moved on, would never again come

above the tide line so they began to die from dehydration. they would barely make it when they were on the verge of death when they were rescued. it is a story of incredible human endurance, full of in and outs, it is a story that really captures the imagination. host: i was asked once by somebody, a few of these people survived and go through this horrible ordeal, they come home, what is the importance in this? what is the lasting impact of their tragedy? we think now of airplane disasters and other modern calamities that bring about changes in legislation and safety. what did this do for whaling?

guest: not much. people from nantucket, this had never happened before. it seemed to them like a random act. the captain would say, he would be given a ship and depart within months of his return to nantucket. no one bolted but as he would say to the young naval officer that he mock -- that he met along the west coast of south america, he had just read the story of the essex. he asked the captain, how could you ever go out there again? he said, lightning never strikes twice.

for the captain, it would. in hawaii, the ship would be beaten to death on the coral. thomas nickerson, the cabin boy, was with him. they had to drag the captain off the deck, he did not want to get back into a whaleboat under the circumstances. luckily, they would be rescued that next day. as the captain would save to a missionary on his return to nantucket, if all places, one of the places -- he would say to the missionary, i will be judged as a lucky man. he would never go to the sea again and live out his love -- life as a night watchman.

host: you alluded to a couple of written sources. as a historian wanting to tell these compelling stories from the past, we rely on the evidence that exist for it. i think it is really interesting that there are two really compelling accounts from the survivors and then secondhand accounts from the missionary who met the captain that wrote down what he remembered the captain saying. i would love to hear about your encounter when you are on nantucket before you brought the book that inspired. guest: when i look back, i did not know how lucky i was living on nantucket that not only you

had this whaling museum and research center which has thomas nickerson's account. it is just an extraordinary document. it is the kind of book you get at a stationery store today, where he had written out his account event and had done wonderful drawings. to hold that in your hand is extraordinary, but there is also a museum that has its own great archive. there is the town building but i have to say, one of the resources you guys had was that

genealogy. it was possible for the first time to take two people and figure out how closely they were related and i was very curious, how closely related were the people from nantucket? i tried to figure out and they were all related. in survival situations, it is groups of people who have a pre-existing bond, whether it is spiritual or cultural, that tend to make it out at a higher rate than those who do not have those kinds of bonds. that probably helped the fact that there were only five survivors from the whaleboat's but the other thing is. i spent time at the last

american wooded whaling ship, channeling what would it have been like when a whale attacked and went to the whaling museum that had its own will -- owner wonderful collection so all of this provided, history is what we tell using the evidence of what came from the past. you do not know everything about what happened, you just have these artifacts from the past. all of these kinds of things and you take that altogether. all sorts of this stuff and take it altogether and it is the historians job to try to tell

the story as best as you can, being truthful to what historical accounts you have, and inevitably, they disagree in some instances. you have to make the judgment call on who to believe. host: it is interesting because the nantucket historical association holds quite a few of these things. in 2015, a film version of your book, big hollywood treatment, inspired by your book. here at the nha, we re-examine the essex tragedy and look anew at some of these artifacts and some of these things. it was one of the first project i worked on.

we are going to do to a show about the essex the nha holds all of the surviving at artifacts from the essex disaster one way of looking at it, there is basically one. it is this piece of twine. it is the most heartbreaking artifact. guest: this is a crewmember and just this little and piece of twine. one of the crew members in the whaleboat's would take the fibers from the sales and his clothing and create we've, a piece of twine. you often see this behavior in

survival situations, where so much time is passing. what you do under the circumstances to stay sane and take up the equivalent of a hobby. in this instance, this young teenager was creating this piece of twine and pulled out of the whaleboat. he still had this piece of twine with him, which clearly was important enough to him. your member when it came a part of the collection? host: it became a part in 20 -- 1914 and then gave it to alexander starbuck. i do not know exactly when it was gifted but it up with alexander in 1914.

it is in this little ivory frame with a card that says he was in the boat for 93 days. it was very powerful artifact all that is left is this piece of twine. that is already alluded to from previous voyages of the essex. there is other accounts. a silver ladle that was given to daniel russell, the captain of the previous voyage. the ship was regarded as having greasy lock. we have artifacts that reflect

that. another thing that the associate -- in the imagination, is a trunk of the. the man who had it sold it to the man on the other ship. this is from the essex. he held it dear. he retired in his family was from there in ohio. after the organization was founded, his family gave the trunk to the asa. this has always been displayed as a trunk from the essex. there isn't a single water stain on it. they were in the boats for three months. how would you know you are in the spot near where the essex

sank? it's an oral tradition but it is an artifact. that is the ultimate thing about writing history. i will always have huge respect for the tenuous this -- tenuousness of our ability to really understand what happened. it is said that those who don't know history are going to repeat it. unfortunately we are always going to relive history no matter how well you know it. it's terrifying now. we don't know where we're going. the history is great. you can look back and thing, this is where you are going.

no. we have the luxury of looking back. when you are in the middle of it, you don't know. when things like a trunk float into the collection, they almost become an artifact of the cultural memory of the essex. it may not have been pollard's trunk. that is where this institution is so important. not only do you have the stuff that connects with laser directness, you have the evidence of how an island culture responded to something like this.

it is endlessly fascinating. the longer i'm in this business i begin to realize how lucky i was to live on nantucket, to stumble onto this story and decide to tell it and to have all of this incredible organization. >> we are happy to have such great people come to use the resources and to make such good storytelling out of it. this is the 200th anniversary of the disaster. you have been speaking in a number of forums about it. any memories from the process of writing the book? >> this was before the internet had kicked in. now, you google something in your lead to it, but i was using

a library loan to get not only books but academic articles. i was working with our local library, working very closely with sharon, the librarian. she would write out a lot of things. she would call to say that some articles have come in. she said she would be in town and she would pick them up. she went up to the great hall, to the reference desk and sharon looked worriedly into ulysses' eyes and said, is dad alright? they said he is ok and she went back to the car just to see what was in it in the first article

was the core value of cannibalism, to analyze calories and nutrition, what happens if you eat someone. for me, this was research that took him to the whole island. everybody said have you heard the tradition about what happened to captain pollard when he came back to nantucket? and the story was pollard was with some friends on the steps of the pacific national bank when someone from off island who had recently arrived on the ferry came up and said, "i am looking for someone named owen coffin. do you know where i can find

him?" and owen coffin was one on the essex who didn't make it, and pollard allegedly said, "know him? i et him," and how is that about tradition coming from nantucketers? i have always had interest in the dark side of history. i am not much interested in the great triumphs that inspire inspiration. i am interested in the scary stuff, what happens to people, so the darkness of the essex story had an immediate appeal, and i am a big stephen king fan and all of that kind of thing, but what i really do not anticipate was how much i would identify with the crewmembers

during the writing of "in the heart of the sea." what was amazing for me is that once they got into the whaleboats, as i was writing it, they were in the whaleboats, during the winter, january and february, and that was the actual time of year i was writing the book, and i had sort of a fantasy that i would write, that part on the day that they survived, but what i did not anticipate was how hard it was going to be to write about the situation, where on pollard's boat, four of them left, with a teenaged nantucketer. they have all grown up together, and pollard is actually related to owen coffin, and they could

probably all die of starvation, but in the custom of the sea, if they drew lots and executed the first person who drew the straw and consumed their body, the rest would have a chance to live. can you imagine to be in that situation? when pollard was rescued, it would be pollard and a kid by the name of ramsdell that were found in the whaleboat, they were clutching the dead, and dead bones of their messmates, that's how it was described. pollard would come onto the deck of the whale ship that rescued them, and that night, i do not know how he did it, he would tell the story of what happened, and it was reported by a captain who listened to this. can you just imagine the trauma this man has been in for months, with a skeleton, reciting how

they drew lots and how his much younger cousin drew the short lot? pollard repeatedly said, "my boy, no one is going to touch you if you do not want to do this," and the boy, who was raised a quaker, said, "no, i like my lot as much as any other," and they would execute the boy, and he would be dispatched, and, ultimately, it would be the one thing to allow pollard and ramsdell to survive, this is tough stuff and it was a hard process, and one i will -- i feel such a tremendous debt to the people who lived it, and i just hope that the book in some way does a proper tribute. mike: it is interesting.

you mentioned spending time at the charles w. morgan seaport with that atmosphere, and there is nothing like being on nantucket in winter to inspire lots of thoughts. in some ways, it is easy to see how melville grasped on this. melville, as a young man, goes whaling, and he reads chase's account. mr. philbrick: given the book by chase's son. he's channeling the gods here. and melville reads this, and in his -- through the nantucket network, he got a copy of owen chase's narrative when he was working on "moby dick," which was very rare at that point, and in the back, he would write, on

the same latitude as where the essex went down, i read this and it had a remarkable effect on me. that is one of the biggest understatements in literary history, but that was not his only connection. mike: he had gone whaling. melville was a collector, a collector of information, a collector of literature, a collector of ideas, filtering it through and bringing it out in his work, and as a young man to read this provocative account, you know, given the family connections, and to let that percolate during the intervening years -- mr. philbrick: yes, it is just remarkable, and then he writes "moby dick" to my mind the greatest american novel ever written.

unfortunately, it was panned by the criticis. reading from the strange book, it marked the end, in a way, of his literary career, although he would keep writing. when i first moved to nantucket, i was really excited, and it was kind of a letdown when i learned that melville had never been in nantucket before writing "moby dick," but he would visit nantucket the summer after writing "moby dick." melville publishes his masterpiece, but it's completely neglected. visits nantucket, traveling with his father-in-law -- i like my father-in-law but not necessarily the most auspicious way to go on vacation, and his father was the judge, and they stayed at what is now the jared coffin house. living kitty corner across the street was none other than captain pollard, and as melville would write, also right in the

back of his copy of chase's narrative. he would write in green crayon, because late in life, his eyesight had begun to go, a product of all of those years out on the sea, and his eyesight would go, and he would write in the back pages of his copy of chase's narrative, sometime in the 1850's, "visited nantucket and saw captain pollard. to the islanders, he was a nobody, but to me, the most remarkable man i have ever met." if that is not a character reference, i do not know what is. and melville, there at the tailspin of his career saw pollard, someone who had experienced the worst possible fate for a nantucket whaleman, not once but twice, i think he saw in pollard a real kind of source of inspiration on how you

could survive when the worst happens. melville would return to that meeting with pollard in a long poem he would write about it called "clarel," that would recount a trip to the holy land. he recounts meeting a man who had a ship that had been rammed by a whale and meeting the fog, the tendrils of the fog wrapping around him. it has got to be based on the circumstance that he saw pollard, and so i think what is fascinating for me is, yes, "moby dick" was inspired by the story of the essex, particularly the sinking of the ship, but it was the captain of the essex who would really become a lifelong source of inspiration for melville in the years after he wrote "moby dick." mike: i think that is very

powerful, in that we here at the nha, in doing the history of the island, we talk about technology, but we are really about people. we are about telling stories from real people and making their stories and their experiences come alive to the extent that we can. that is a great reminder of the effort we put into doing that, with pollard, it reminds me of the story you were telling about on your book tour in 2000. mr. philbrick: right. "in the heart of the sea" came out in may 2000. i cannot believe it was 20 years ago, more than 20 years ago. and i went on a book tour, my first book tour. it was a strange experience, and it was a wonderful experience but terrifying at the same time. and i was in st. louis at the west bank, still there, a

wonderful bookstore. as i came into the bookstore, there was a gentleman with a grocery bag clutching it, and he looked at me as i walked by, and i gave my talk, and then he came up to be afterward and said, "i have got something i want to show you." before he opened up the bag, he explained he had been on nantucket several years before and had come across a yard sale, where there were books for sale, and there was this old bible for sale, and he bought it for a couple of bucks, and he brought it back to st. louis, and then he was reading my book about the essex and a captain pollard, and he said, wait. what was the name inside that bible? he opened it up, and it was the pollard family bible, george pollard's family, and he said, you know?

should i have this? shouldn't this be somewhere else? i think the nantucket historical association would love to have it, and sure enough, this wonderful gentleman sent this. at that point, there was an essex exhibit, and within a week, the pollard family bible was on exhibit at that exhibit, so for me, that was like the power of history, and once the book came out, i got something from the ramsdell family in pittsburgh. i grew up in pittsburgh, the center of the universe, and they were descendants from the

ramsdells on the essex. they had a tradition in the family, that when it came to grandpa ramsdell, whenever it was time for dinner, they all sat down right away and began eating, because they all knew what happened when grandpa ramsdell got hungry. so another tradition that came down through the family. it was fun when the book came out. the story just kept on happening, and it was really wonderful. mike: we have the bible in our collection, and we had it in our 2015 show. mr. philbrick: by the way, your exhibit was terrific. you had a game, basically. you could be one of the crewmembers, right? you would find out what happened to you. i was talking to someone who was, at that point, sitting with a couple of four-year-olds

twins. and one got one character, and the other got the other character, and one of the twins had died, and the other survived. it was a huge hit. mike: thank you. for those in the audience who may not have had a chance to see it, when we re-presented the story of essex in 2015, we looked at what are the core ideas of this story we really want our visitors to come away with? that the story involves a journey which was a key part of what we wanted to communicate, and the people, getting back to that connection to real people in the past. so we built a reproduction boat of the right scale that you could sit in and read projection quotes as the disaster gets worse and worse, and there was a big mural of the ocean, and we had a path on the floor to follow the journey to the whale

and past the whale, and then these cards at each five or six paces, then each survivor -- "look, i drew a card of charles ramsdell." "did he stay on henderson island?" "oh, no, he was not one of those men." exactly what happened. he was the visitor, and of course, many visitors. 20 men, 20 cards, and people were looking for owen chase, charles pollard. those went fast. you could randomly get any of them. forgrounding that horrible journey, getting your mind around what that might have been like.

and then these are real people, and the survivors came back and had lives at sea. mr. philbrick: actually, and we have artifacts from that, and some of the great artifacts are the houses in which these people lived, were living in a museum, in many ways. orange street, and the owen chase house is still there. the house that thomas nickerson was in, then a guest house. nantucketers no longer fish for whales. they do for tourists. and then north water street has this part of the harbor house complex. there is the pollard house there on center street. it is just amazing. you can go to the cemetery. owen chase's grave is there. i had a remarkable opportunity to take two of owen chase's

descendants, a sister and brother, to owen chase's grave before the book came out. and, you know, it's sort of brought home to me this is a local story. you know, this is local history in one sense for me, but one of the aims i had in "in the heart of the sea" was to try to make it more universal and to focus on this as an endurance situation. as what happens to people in the worst situations. i wanted to not make it just another whaling story but something where if you grew up in topeka, kansas, and had never seen the sea, you might be drawn into the human element. and it is really the human element. if we do not engage with history emotionally, it really ultimately means nothing to us. mike: yes. absolutely. we have been talking now for about 50 minutes.

we have questions people have been submitting. i will segue into that. and so, the first question we have is actually somebody who noticed that you mentioned in your book that male sperm whales are sometimes referred to as carpenter fish, and from loud clangs that they make to potential mates, and there is the story of the hammering and repairing the damaged whaleboat may have attracted the whale that attacked the essex. so the first question, has there been any research that it may have been the repair work that led to the attack? mr. philbrick: yes, when i was researching the book, i reached out to one of the foremost sperm whale experts on earth. he and his wife and small children took a sailboat and basically sailed very close to

where the essex went down with very high-tech listening devices underwater, listening to the -- they were really the first ones to develop a good sense of how sperm whales communicate. through this process of clicks. females have clicks. males have more like a clang. like a boom sound. they have a real language, almost a morse code-like sequence of clicks. i emailed him and explained to him as best i could from the evidence what happened. what did he think with the whale happened?

and he says, who knows? he was very familiar, obviously. he tended to think that maybe the whale sort of blundered into the ship by accident and then got angry and came after it. sperm whales, male sperm whales, are very territorial. they're like elephants. male sperm whales will attack each other in a fight over a pod of females. whether it was, who knows? ultimately, i have not heard a definitive explanation for what happened. unless we can find a descendent of that sperm whale with a oral tradition that granddad to tell, i do not think we will know that. that is one of the great things about the story. at the center of this is this question. what was the whale thinking? looking at the whale attacking, coming at them, chase felt in

his account like there is something going on. some kind of malevolent deity. what is going on there? it made its way into "moby dick." you can only imagine. we'll never know, and i think that is what gives history real legs. where something of huge importance happens, but, ultimately, we won't never really, really know exactly what happened. mike: that somewhat segues into one of the other questions, which is about -- so, we have these accounts that say what happened. they drew straws in pollard's boat. as certain men died, they resorted to cannibalism. the question is, how do we know they are telling us the truth? mr. philbrick: that is a question when it comes to all evidence in history.

the one thing, when it comes to narratives, people's accounts. when it comes to letters, they are biased. they are the person telling their side of the story. so when it comes to chase's account, it is the narrative of an officer putting a voyage that went really, really bad in the best possible light. particularly when it comes to his involvement. as an historian, usually you want stuff that is as close to the event as possible, you know, when things are still hot. when people have a chance to think too much about it, particularly when they are thinking about their own reputation, and that is what is really interesting about that letter describing pollard's first account. it's a disinterested person recording this, coming right out of his mouth right after, as soon as possible. nickerson's account was recorded late in life when a writer asked

him to record his account, so that is suspect. but on the other side, he had had the chance to talk to other survivors, get information that chase may not have had, and coming from a different perspective. he was 15. he was a cabin boy. he had no great, professional stake in what happened. and so, what he reveals our details about what happened during the initial collision that chase chose not to include, that the whale after it first collided into the side of the ship ended up on the side, floating, stunned, knocked out beside the ship, its tale very close to the rudder.

chase had the opportunity to pick up this 18-foot spear to try to kill this whale that had dared to attack the ship, but then he realized the tale was so close to the rudder that if provoked, it could take out the steering device, which would be disastrous. as nickerson said, if he knew what would happen, he would risk losing the rudder, but chase makes no mention of this. so in that instance, i tend to believe nickerson on this. i do not think he is making it up, and he had great respect for chase. -- on the other side, nickerson claimed they never had to eat anybody out right, that it was bread that kept them through, when chase provided clear evidence that they were reduced to survival cannibalism. nickerson was an old man. he did not want to be remembered as a cannibal.

so what you need to do is look at the various sources, think about, you know, how their point of view would have bent what they said, and ultimately do your best to figure out what happened on your own judgment. that is why people need to return to these stories over and over again. there is no such thing as a definitive account of any historical event, particularly as we move through time, and people are interested in different kinds of things. we look back. people are interested in telling the story in different ways. mike: yes. in fact, one of the questions here is asking about the differences in nickerson and chase's narrative. they are written in different times. if you don't mind, i will address that. it is so fascinating to read

nickerson's account britain in later -- written in later life. and he clearly has chase's account on his desk, and he is reading it, and then he fills in other details, or he chooses not to engage. mr. philbrick: again, with the bread versus resorting to cannibalism, but what nickerson does is to fill in all of the detail from the 15-year-old boy perspective as opposed to the perspective of the 25-year-old, and they make a really interesting study that way. in fact, they are widely available. anybody can breed these sources. the nickerson is available in our collection and is available on our website. mr. philbrick: it is highly readable. it is a nice script. and the images are just amazing. and just think. that must've been a pretty

traumatic process for nickerson, to relive it and record it and write it all out, which makes it interesting process in any event. mike: yes. another question we have had is asking about the island that they stopped at on their voyage. you know, if they did not know the name of the island, how did the rescuers know where to get them? do you want me to answer that, or do you want to talk to that? mr. philbrick: yes. take it away. mike: because they get to this island, and they use what navigational equipment they have to figure out where they are, and they open their copy of the new american practical navigator, the bible for navigators, and they look up and it says that they are at -- island.

they look up and it says the name of the island. and that's where they think they are. so the three men stay behind and when pollard and everyone else are picked up, they hire a british vessel headed across the pacific. they pay them a fee to stop at this island and pick up the men. the captain of that vessel said -- yes, i know where that i would is. he sails out and there's no one there. there's no evidence anyone has been there. but he knows this area of the pacific enough to know there's another island across the horizon and that is henderson and that's where the men were. mr. philbrick: what is interesting is henderson island has since become a kind of a vortex for plastic, floating plastic. i think it has to do with why the essex guys ended up there. the currents all sort of converge on this island and that's why those three whaleboat -- whaleboats ended up there.

the beach where they landed is just full of plastic garbage. this once virgin island -- and it was a virgin island -- not a virgin island, but it was absolutely pristine back when i was writing, had the great fortune to run across a scientific study of the ecology of henderson island. a group of scientists had lived there for an extended amount of time. all sorts of photographs, hugely helpful to me. then to see know in the last two decades what has happened to that place is just heartbreaking. mike: i think we have time for just maybe one more. are there any other examples of whales attacking whaling ships? mr. philbrick: good question. yes, there are.

the question is what was happening here. were the whales getting more aggressive as they figured this out? there's the possibility there were plenty of will ships -- whale ships prior to the essex that never made it back. had they been destroyed by a whale beforehand? it did not happen a lot, but it did happen. while melville was writing "moby dick" revising it in the summer of 1851, word came to him of a whale ship that had been attacked and he would write, i think it is the hawthorne -- has

my people heart raised this monster? talk about man -- when i was researching "in the heart of the sea" i explored every incident where we had reports of whales attacking a ship. there are even accounts during world war ii of sperm whales attacking metal naval ships. who knows what behavior inspired that? it didn't happen a lot, but it was the whale men's worst nightmare. if every male whale decided to attack a ship, it would make it very hard for someone in a wooden ship. mike: we've reached the end of our time. thank you everyone for joining us. we are delighted to have been able to have you on the 200th anniversary of the event itself. mr. philbrick: thanks again to

the nha. without this organization, i couldn't have written the book. i owe everyone a that of gratitude. mike: thank you for joining us. we appreciate it. >> you are watching american history tv. all weekend every weekend on c-span3. >> the senate recording reel features eisenhower's second inauguration in 1957. the official of was taken in private at the white house because january 20 fell on a sunday that year. the next day come a public ceremony was held. this video provided by the dwight d. eisenhower library and museum also shows highlights of the parade and the balls that evening. ♪