parody of joe biden, we talk about how popular cup tour influences presidents and how, in turn, presidents leave their impript on the culture. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern, and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. you're watching american history tv, every weekend on c-span3. explore our nation's past. american history tv on c-span3. created by america's cable television companies. today we're brought to you by these television companies who provide american history tv to viewers as a public service. nathanial philbrick talks about his book "in the heart of the sea:the tragedy of the whaleship essex" which details the 1820 sinking of the "essex" in the atlantic ocean following a destructive attack by a sperm

whale and they recount the fate of the ship's crew as they tried for three months to reach main land south america. the nantucket historical association hosted this event and provided the video. good evening and welcome to the nantucket whaling museum. the nantucket historical association is very pleased to bring you our socially distanced commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the whaleship "essex" tragedy. my name is michael harrison. i'm the obid massey research chair at the nantucket historical association and we are thrilled to be this evening in conversation with nathaniel philbrick, long-time islander here. nat and his wife arrived on nantucket in 1986, and have lived here ever since. and nat is an historian and has written numerous books about the

island. in the year 2000 published in "in the heart of the sea," a book about the "essex" tragedy, which won the national book award in 2000 for nonfiction. since then he's gone on to write quite a number of books, very good book about the u.s. exploring expedition, looking at the mayflower, a whole variety of other interesting topics, branching off from sort of nantucket. this is sort of the sea base for all of the work that nat's done. we are thrilled that everybody can join us this evening. this story of the "essex" tragedy is a sort of near and dear story to nantucket and to nantucket's identity as an historic whaling port. and this organization, the nantucket museum, is a unique place to tell this story. we preserve the history of nantucket for the people of

nantucket and we have lots of collections related to this story. it's sort of in our bones, as it were. so we are really thrilled to have be to have all of you join us this evening for our conversation about the "essex." >> here, here. i second that. mike, it's really great to be in conversation with you. there's no one who knows nantucket history like you do. >> well, thank you. so, the basic thing, you know, we're here to talk about the "essex." and i suppose the question of the evening we should start with, in case anybody who's joining us may not know, what are the basic things everybody should know about the "essex" tragedy? >> yeah. well, the "essex" left nantucket in the summer of 1819, just the year after the pacific national bank was built. she was a typical whaleship, about 20 years old. not in great repair. she had a first-time captain, george pollard jr. first mate owen chase, 21 men.

the cabin boy was thomas nickerson. and they departed and headed for the pacific. it was a normal whaling voyage, not a very successful one as they made their way around cape horn, up the west coast of south america and they decided to venture out farther into the pacific than the "essex" had ever been before to the offshore grounds. and they were after a stop at the galapagos, they were 3,000 miles from the coast of south america when they sighted a huge sperm whale. 85 feet long. this is a huge whale. if you know the huge jaw here at the whaling museum, that reputedly came from an 85-foot whale, just massive. particularly when you realize the ship was 85 feet long.

well, one of the whale boats was -- was damaged and so first mate owen chase dragged that boat up onto the deck of the whaleship "essex," was repairing it, while the other who whale boats were off pursuing whales. nickerson, all of 15 years old was at the helm, steering, when this huge 85-foot sperm whale appeared to the -- on star -- on their port side. they didn't think much of it because never before in the history of whaling had a whale attacked a ship. but this whale had a different intention. it began to pick up speed, slammed into the side of the ship, knocked the men to their sides. would come back at it again. drive the ship backwards, crush the bow like an egg shell. the ship would not sink but fill up with water. the men would take to their

whale boats. they all gathered. captain pollard would eventually arrive and say to mr. chase, because they were over the horizon. they hadn't seen what happened. would say to chase, mr. chase, what is the matter? these were men of few words? chase simply said, we have been stoved by a whale. now, many of us have -- if you don't know about the "essex," you're probably familiar with "moby-dick." this would inspire the climax of that great american novel. but where "moby-dick" ends is just the beginning of the "essex" disaster. it would turn into a survival tale like none other. fearful of rumors canibels in the islands of the pacific, they decided to go for south america, 3,000 miles away. you know, impossible voyage, and

the great irony, they would be forced to survival, cannibalism. only two of the three whale boats would be sighted by rescue craft. five nantucketers would get out of those whale boats alive. three others were left on henderson island. and when news came to nantucket and eventually the rest of the country, this was big news. you know, this is before the american west had become the predominant wilderness that incited the american imagination. the sea was the wilderness. this was the donner party before that all unfolded. owen chase would write an account of it. probably ghost written, that would become renowned around the country and the world. this was big news. and so the "essex" -- this was a tale that nantucketers were not particularly proud of because it was a voyage that went bad, but

it was a story full of all sorts of fascination for those outside nantucket. and so this was a story i realized i needed to write about. >> yeah. and there's some interesting things in this disaster that come to mind as you're retelling it. you know, on the one hand, this part of the pacific they were whaling in, the offshore ground, had only been discovered by american whalers a year or two before as being a place rich with sperm whales, so this wasn't really a part of the ocean the crew of the "essex" or many of their nantucket brethren had been to, they knew very well. they were sort of more comfortable on the coast of south america. but there was money to be made and they ventured out. is so, on the one hand, they were sort of in the unknown, taking a risk, but then here they are cast into their boats with their ship wrecked and

imagine us being cast into a boat in the middle of the pacific. i don't know how -- you're a reputable sailor, you might be able to do some great stuff, nat. i would be at wit's end. >> i'm with you. >> here are professional sailors who are able to salvage things from the wreck. they're able to rig their rowing boats to sail. they're actually able -- they have all these professional skills they bring to bear to actually save themselves. and the great irony or tragedy of this, either way, is that they're outmatched by the circumstance. they make a decision not to go to the nearest islands because they have heard there are canibels there. maybe a limitation of their knowledge. maybe, maybe not. but they know south america. they're going to go to south america. that's where they go. it just happens to be sailing against the prevailing winds for

3,000 miles in boats that don't have center boards and not enough water and food, doesn't work very well. >> well, you know, what i thought long and hard, and tried to examine it in my research. you know, how did they do this? what were they thinking? and, you know, it's -- this is a story of survival. and when you're in a survival situation, it's your fears that drive you. it's very hard to think rationally. and the fears they all had were the unknown pacific. this was very early in pacific whaling. you know, the only thing they knew about these islands were rumors of canibels. the nantucketers had taken it farther than anyone else but they're also very conservative. they built their knowledge incrementally. and unless they could hear it from someone they knew, they didn't trust that information.

and so the one thing they did know was the sea, whale boats and whaleships. and so when forced to it, just as you described, here's a whaleboat right here. this boat's from a later era. it's much larger than the "essex" whaleboats were, which were only 25 -- 25 feet long. and they built up their sides so that a large wave wouldn't necessarily flood it. these boats were not yet equipped with sails, but they rigged up their own sails. two little masts, they turned them into schooners and off they went. finally falling into the only thing they knew to get back to a civilized coast. and so for me, the story of the "essex" is a tale of human survival, but as you alluded to, these guys had tremendous skills, but ultimately it would

nature that would call the shots in what they would endure in the weeks and even months ahead. >> yeah, absolutely. and, you know, the irony that we see in the story now as modern observers of -- they don't want to go to certain islands because they're afraid of cannibalism but then they have to resort to cannibalism in these boats. they're in the boats for three months, three months in an open boat. >> that's an entire summer. >> yeah. >> and you're at sea and, you know, they had in the galapagos islands, they had at that point in the history of whaling, it was common to round up galapagos tortoises. huge creatures that could get over 100 pounds and store them like wood, stacks of wood in the hull. and they would -- and these galapagos tortoises could live for months, even as long as a year without any food and water

and provide the crew with wonderful meat. so, when this whale attacked their ship, they had all these galapagos tortoises. so, they put two of those tortoises in each whaleboat. they had some bread, some water, and that was the key thing. they didn't have a lot of water. and off they went. you know, i -- i -- for me, the closest i could get to sort of getting my head imaginatively around what they were going through was to think in terms of science fiction. i mean, you know, this is like a spaceship that's blown up and you're in your escape pod in the middle of the universe. i mean, the pacific was space for them really. and, you know, here they are, out there just doing their best to try to get back home. >> yeah. and hoping, you know, they know this are other ships out there. british ships, american ships, nantucket ships. they're hoping maybe they'll pass one. but imagine, you know, sailing through an area the size of

texas hoping you're going to pass, you know, one of the 60, 70 other whaleships that are out there. and luck or not luck, they didn't pass any others. >> no. they felt that if everything went right, you know, if they -- if the winds worked perfectly, they might be able to get to the coast of south america in a month and a half. and their provisions would last that. but, of course, everything woulding ly wrong. like you said, they were always hopeful someone would discover them. that didn't happen. they began to run out of water. they were dying of dehydration when they sight an island. an island they were not aware of. they misnamed it, called it ducie island. it was actually henderson island. you know, you can't make this stuff up. just as their on the verge of

death, sight this island, sail up to it and there's no water. they can't find any water. until luckily it's a spring high and low tide and at dead low tide, bubbling from a rock that's usually submerged is freshwater. this is positively biblical. >> right. >> and it saves them for now. and you know, but they would realize -- you know, this is almost a metaphor for the human race on this planet because within just a couple of days, a couple weeks, they realize they are killing off all the wildlife that they could sustain themselves with, the birds, and if they stayed for any length of time, they would ultimately starve. so, you know, they decide, we got to push on. and it's then where three men, not nantucketers, a couple of them from cape cod, one was an englishman, realized, you know, this is an ingrown group of

nantucketers, good luck to you boys, we're going to stay on dry land. so they would stay, and, you know, very emotional parting. and ultimately they would be rescued because the survivors would send a rescue ship there. but, you know, another great irony, it turned out that that rock where -- from which water would bubble up would, as the tide moved on from spring low would never again come above the tide line. and so they began to die of dehydration. and so they would barely make it. they were on the verge of death when they were rescued. once again, it's a story of incredible human endurance, full of all sorts of ins and outs, and it's a story that, you know, really captures the imagination. >> and it's interesting.

i was asked once by somebody, so these people -- you know, a few of these people survive. they go through this horrible ordeal. they come home. what's the importance of this? what's the lasting impact of their tragedy? we think now of airplane disasters or any variety of modern calamities that bring about, you know, changes in legislation, changes in safety. the titanic disaster, a very famous example of changing all kinds of rules and regulations. so somebody asked me, what did this do for whaling? >> not much. i mean, well, nantucketers, you know, this had never happened before. it seemed to them likes, you know, just a random act. as captain pollard would say, he would be given a ship and depart within months of his return to nantucket. clearly, no one faulted him or

anyone else on the crew, but as he would say to a young naval officer he minute along the west coast of south america that, you know, because the naval officer said, he had just read the story of the "essex," like so many americans. he said, you're not captain pollard of the "essex"? he said, yes, i am. he said, how could you ever go out there again? and poll land would say, well, on nantucket we have a saying, lightning never strikes twice. for pollard it would. off hawaii in a storm they would fetch up on french frig et shoals. the boat would be beaten to on the coral. thomas nickerson, that cabin boy was with him when this happened and would leave an account of it. he said they had to drag pollard off the deck. he did not want to get back on a

whaleboat under these circumstances. luckily they would be rescued the next day. but as pollard would say to a missionary, who he would meet on his return to nantucket, you know, of all places, you know, the pacific islands, ahiti, one of the places they decided not to go to because of fear of cannibel, he said, back home i will be judged an unlucky man. yes, that was right. he would never go to the sea again and live out his life as a night watchman. >> it's interesting. you alluded to a couple of the sort of written sources for this story. you know, and as a historian wanting to tell these compelling stories from the past, we rely on the evidence that exists for it. i think it's really interesting in this case that there are two really compelling firsthand accounts by two of the survivors. and then there are a variety of these sort of secondhand

accounts where like the missionary who met captain pollard then wrote down what he remembered pollard saying. and naval officers doing the same thing. i would love to hear sort of about your encounter on nantucket before you wrote the book with these sources that actually inspired looking more closely about this and writing about it anew. >> yeah, well, i -- when i look back, i didn't know how lucky i was to be living on nantucket where you had not only this wonderful whaling museum and research center, which has thomas nickerson's account, which he wrote late in life, which had just been really newly discovered when i took up this story. you know, it's just an extraordinary document. it's the kind of, you know, book you'd get at a stationery store

today, where he had written out his account of it and even done wonderful drawings of the event. so, you know, to hold that in your hand is extraordinary, but there's also the athaneum, which has its own great archive. the newspapers had just been recently microwaved -- microwaved with, right. microfilmed. there's the town building. but one of the -- i have to say, one of the resources, the historical -- you guys, had, was the genealogy had just gone online, and so it was possible now really for the first time to take two people and figure out how closely they were related. i was very curious, how close really related were the nantucketers? so i did that with each -- you know, figured out how they were all -- and they were all related. you know, over and over again.

and in survival situations, it's people -- it's groups of people that have a pre-existing bond, whether it's spiritual, whether it's cultural, that tend to make it out at a higher rate than those who don't have those kinds of bonds. that probably helped the fact that there were only five nantucket survivors from the whaleboats at the end. but the other thing i went to0n mystic sea port and spent time in the charles w. morgan, the last remaining american wooden whaleship. spent a lot of time in the folksal imagining what it would be like when a whale would attack and went to the kendall whaling museum which is part of new bedford whaling museum, another key source. so, all of these provided -- you know, history is -- history

isn't what happened in the past. it's what -- it's what we tell using the evidence of what came from the past. you know, you don't know everything about what happened. you just have these artifacts from the past, whether it's a journal, a letter, a newspaper account, all of these kinds of things. and you take that all together. you know, there was even crew lists here that the nh -- all sorts of stuff. you take this all together and it's the historian's job then to try to tell the story as best you can, being truthful to what historical accounts you have, and inevitably they disagree in some cases, between chase and nickerson that happened. and then you have to make the judgment call who to believe. >> well, it's interesting because we -- you know, the nantucket historical association holds, you know, quite a few of these things that you worked

from. and in 2015 a film version of your book came out, the big hollywood treatment. >> yep. >> inspired by, i might put it that way, inspired by your book. and so here at the nha, we took that opportunity to sort of reassess the "essex" tragedy and do an exhibit about it. and look anew at some of these artifacts and some of these things and bring them out and put them on display. and it was one of the first projects i worked on here at the association. and, you know, we're going to do a show about the "essex" with all of our stuff about the "essex." and so, okay, let's see what we have in terms of artifacts. and as i'm fond of saying, the nantucket historical association holds all the surviving artifacts from the "essex" disaster, both of them, because when you look -- >> right. >> when you look at -- one way of looking at it, things that are actually from the ship,

there's basically one. and it's this piece of twine. >> it's the most heartbreaking artifact, totally. >> do you want to explain the twine for us? >> yes. this is a crew member and it's just this little framed piece of twine where one of the crew members in the whaleboats would take the fibers from the sails, from his clothing, and create -- weave a piece of twine out of it. and you often see this behavior in survival situations, where, you know, so much time is passing, you're terrified all the time. what do you do under these circumstances to just stay sane? you find some -- you take up the equivalent of a hobby. in this instance, this young teenager was creating this piece of twine. and when he was pulled out of the whaleboats, he still had that piece of twine with him,

which clearly was important enough to him and his family that it eventually ended up here. do you remember when it -- >> yeah. >> -- became a part of the collection? >> it became a part of the collection in 1914. benjamin lawrence, the crewman who made it, kept it, and then he gave it to alexander star buck, a great historian of nantucket and of nantucket whaling. i don't know all of the exactly when it was gifted but it ended up with starbuck and starbuck gave it to the nha in 1914. it's just as you describe. it's in this ivory frame with a card that says, you know, he was in the boat 93 days and he made this piece of twine. you know, it's a very powerful artifact. they're in these boats and they have the ship and all that's left is this piece of twine. >> yeah. >> very powerful. and now, obviously, you know, nat's already alluded to manuscripts, there are crew

lists from previous voyages of the "essex," there's wafsh books from other voyages of thezuez÷ with all the crew signatures. we own -- the museum holds a silver ladle that was given to daniel russell, the previous captain of the "essex" at the end of the previous voyage, which had been very successful. he was then given a new command, a new ship, and that's where pollard, his former first mate stepped up. so, the ship was regarded as having greasy luck, as being a good one to be aboard. and we have artifacts that reflect that. you know, i think another thing the association holds that kind of reflects the power of this kind of event in the imagination is a trunk. it's a small travel trunk of the period and it was fetched out of the sea. the story is that it was fetched out of the sea from near where the "essex" wrecked. and a man on one ship, who had

it, sold it to a man on another ship. with this is from the "essex." and the man bought it and took it and held it dear. and then he lived in ohio. he retired there. his family was from there. in the 1890s after this organization was founded, his family gave the trunk to the nha, knowing the importance of the "essex" to nantucket, so this is from the "essex." it's always been displayed as trunk from the "essex." it doesn't have a single water stain on it. so, and they were in the boats for three months. who knows. how would you know that you were near the spot where the "essex" sank? nevertheless -- >> right. it's one of those oral traditions, but, hey, it's an artifact. and that's the ultimate thing about writing history, is you begin to -- i mean, i will

always have huge respect for, you know, the tenuousness of the evidence and our ability to really understand what actually happened. you can only -- you know, it's said that those who don't know history will live to repeat it. unfortunately, we're all going to repeat history, no matter how well you know it. you're in the midst of your own time. we're all living in the fog of reality. it's terrifying now, we don't know where we're going. that's exactly the way it was with the crew of the "essex" or any time in the past. you know, the history is great. you can look back and say, well, this is where it was going and there's a tendency to think it was a simpler time and they knew what they were doing. no. it's just we have the luxury of looking back. when you're in the middle of it, you don't know. so, you know, when things like a

trunk flowed into the collection, you know, who knows how, it's -- you know, they almost become an artifact of the cultural memory of the "essex" as much -- even if it's -- it may not have actually been pollard's trunk or whomever. and, you know, and that's where this institution is just so -- so important. you know, not only do you have the stuff that connects, you know, with razor -- laser directness to what happened, but you have, you know, evidence of how an island culture responded to something like this. and so it's -- it's endlessly fascinating. and something that, you know, the longer i'm in this business, the more i begin to realize how lucky i was to have lived on nantucket -- live on nantucket, to stumble onto this story and decide to tell it, and have all of this incredible organization.

>> well, thank you. we're happy to have such great people come and use the resources and make -- you know, do good story telling out of it. so, you know, this is the 200th anniversary of this disaster. it's 20th anniversary of your book about the disaster. i know you've been speaking at a number of forums about the book. are there any sort of favorite stories of the process of writing the book? >> well, you know, let's see. one of the -- you know, this was before the internet had really kicked in, so that, you know, now you google something and, you know, you sort of are led to it. but this was -- i was using a lot of inter-library loan to get not only books but academic articles. and so i was working with the athanea, our local library.

and so working very closely with sharron, the reference librarian. and, you know, she would -- and i was, you know, requesting a lot of things. at one point she called to say that some articles had come in. it was a saturday. my wife, melissa, said she was going to be in town, she would pick them up. so, she went up to the great hall, to the reference desk, and sharron looked worriedly into melissa's eyes and said, is nat all right? she said, well, you know, he's working hard, but he's okay. and melissa went back to the car and just out of curiosity, opened up the packet to see what was in it. and the first article was the caloric value of cannibalism so that analyzed calories and nutrition. what happens when you eat someone. and so, hence, sharon's concern.

you know, but for me, this was -- this was a research that took in the whole island. everyone was -- i mean, there were interesting -- one of the traditions i had heard when i was beginning work on this, everyone has said, have you heard the tradition about what happened to captain pollard when he came back to nantucket? and the story was that 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'm looking for someone named owen coughin. do you know where i can find him? owen coughin was one of the people on the "essex" who didn't make it. pollard is reputdly known as

saying, well, no, i ate him. how is that as an oral tradition coming from nantucketers. and this is -- i have always had an interest in the dark side of history. i've not so much interested in the great triumphs, the inspiration. i'm really interested in kind of the scary stuff. that is an index to our, you know, what happens to people in the toughest of times. so, the darkness of the "essex" story had an immediate appeal. but what i didn't -- i'm a big stephen king fan and all of that, but what i really didn't anticipate was how much i would identify with the crew members during the writing of "in the heart of the sea." and what was amazing for me was i actually, once they got into the whaleboats, as i was writing it, they were in the whaleboats

sort of during the winter of january and february, and that was the actual time of the year i was writing the book. and i had sort of a fantasy that i would write -- you know, finish that part of the thing when they were -- on the day that they were survived, but what i didn't anticipate was how hard it was going to be to write about the situation where, you know, on pollard's boat there's four of them left. three of them teenaged nantucketers. they all know each other, have grown up with each other. pollard is actually related to owen coughin. and they come to the point they know if they do nothing, they'll probably all die of starvation. but in the custom of the sea and they draw lots and execute the person who got the short straw and consume his body, the rest will have a chance to live. i mean, can you imagine to be in that situation?

and when pollard was rescued, it would be pollard and a kid with the last name of ramsdale who would be found in their whaleboat, they were clutching the dead bones of their mess mates. that's how it was described. and pollard would come onto the deck of the whaleship that rescued them. that night, i don't know how he did it, would tell the story of what happened and it was recorded by a captain paddick, nantucketer, who listened to this. can you just imagine the drama of this man who's been at sea for three months, living skeleton, reciting how they drew lots and his much younger cousin drew the short lot. pollard reputedly said, you know, my boy, no one's going to touch you if you don't want to do this. and the boy who had been raised a quaker said, no, i like my lot as well as any other.

and so they would draw lots again to see who would execute the boy, and he would be dispatched, as they said, only ultimately would be the one thing that would allow pollard and ramsdale to survive. so, this is tough stuff. and it was a hard process but one that i will -- you know, i feel just such an enormous debt to the island and those people who lived it and just hope that the book in some way does a proper tribute to them. >> it's interesting, you mentioned, you know, both spending time at the charles w. morgan at mystic sea port, imbibing that atmosphere, but also being on -- there's nothing like being on nantucket in winter to, you know, inspire lots of thoughts. in some ways it's easy to see

how melville grasped onto this. melville is a young man, goes whaling. he's a folkal hand. he reads chase's account -- >> given the book by chase's son. >> right. >> when they -- he's channelling the gods here. >> yeah. and, yeah, and, you know, melville reads this and in his -- he -- through the nantucket network, got a copy of owen chase's narrative when he was working on "moby-dick." it was very rare by that point. and is in his own copy, in the back of it, would write, you know, on the same latitude is where the "essex" went down, i read this and had a remarkable effect on me. you know, that's one of the biggest understatements in literary history. and -- but that wasn't his only connection. >> no, no.

he had gone whaling -- melville was a collector. collector of information. a collector of literature. a collector of, like, ideas, filtering it through and then bringing it out into his works. and, you know, as a young man to go whaling, read this evocative account, given to him by these family connections and then to let that percolate during the intervening years -- >> yeah, it's just remarkable. and then he writes "moby-dick," to my mind, the greatest american novel ever written. unfortunately, it was panned by the critics. readers fled screaming from the strange book. and it really marked the end in a way his literary career, even though he would keep writing. when i moved to nantucket, i was exciting because i was going to the land of the pequod. it was a letdown when i learned that melville would never visit

nantucket before writing "moby-dick." he did visit nantucket the summer after writing "moby-dick." can you imagine this? melville publishes his masterpiece, but it's completely neglected. visits nantucket, traveling with his father-in-law. i love my father-in-law, but not necessarily the most awe suspicious way to go on a vacation. and his father was the judge. and they stayed at what's now the jared coffin house, then the atlantic house, and living kitty cornered across the street was none other than captain pollard. and as melville would write in the -- also write in the back of his copy of chase's narrative, and he would write in green crayon, because by late in life, his eyesight had begun to go and is thought to have been a product of all those years out on the sea, his eye site would go and he would write on the

back of -- in the back pages of his copy of chase's narrative, some time in the 1850s, visited nantucket and saw captain pollard. to the islanders, he was a nobody, but to me, the most remarkable man i have ever met. i mean, if that's not a character reference, i don't know what is. and i think melville, who is there at the beginning of the tailspin of his career, saw in pollard someone who had experienced the worst possible fate for a nantucket whaleman, not once but twice in losing his ship. i think he saw in pollard a real kind of source of inspiration of how someone can survive with something when the worst happens. melville would return to that meeting with pollard in a long poem he would write about --

called clarol which recounts a trip to the holy land but he recounts meeting a man who had lost a ship that had been rammed by a whale and meeting him in a fog and the tendrils of the fog wrapping around him like a snake. it has to be based on the circumstances of meeting pollard. i think what's fascinating for me, yes, "moby-dick" was inspired by the story of the "essex," particularly the sinking of the ship, but it would be the captain of the "essex," who would really become a life-long source of inspiration for melville in the years after he wrote "moby-dick." >> yeah. i think that's very powerful and, you know, we here at the nha in doing the history of the island, we talk a lot about ships and harpoons and technology, but we're really all about the people. we're about telling real stories from real people, and making

their stories and their experiences come alive to the extent we can. i think that's a great reminder of the effort we put into doing that. and with pollard, it reminds me of the story you were telling about when you were on your book tour. >> right. >> in 2000. >> right. well, "in the heart of the sea" came out in may 2000. i can't believe it's 20 years ago, more than 20 years ago, and i went on this extensive book tour. my first book tour. it was a strange experience. it was a wonderful experience but terrifying at the same time. i was in st. louis at left bank books. still there. wonderful bookstore. as i came into the bookstore, there was a man with a grocery bag holding it, clutching it. he looked at me as i walked by. i didn't know what was going on. i gave my talk. and then he came up to me afterwards and he said, i've got something i want to show you.

and 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, you know, he bought it for a couple 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 -- he looked back and said, wait, what was the name inside that bible? he opened it up. it was the pollard family bible. you know, george pollard's family. and so he said, you know, i mean, should i have this? don't you think it should be somewhere else? i said, well, you know, i think the folks at the nantucket historical association would love to have it. and sure enough, this wonderful gentleman sent -- it was in the mail by that week.

at that point, there was an "essex" exhibit, and within the week, the pollard family bible was on exhibit at that exhibit. and so, you know, for me, this was like the power of history to sort of bubble up. >> yes. >> you know, once the book came out, i got a card from the ramsdell family in pittsburgh. i grew up in pittsburgh. maritime center of the universe. and they were dissend from the ramsdell on the "essex." they said that they had an oral tradition in the family that when it came to grandpa ramsdell and whenever he got -- 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 came down

through the families. so, i mean, it's been fun when the book came out, you know, it was like, you know, something that -- where, you know, the story just kept on happening and it was really wonderful. >> yeah. that's -- we have the bible is in the collection. we had it in our 2015 show. >> by the way, your exhibit was terrific. that was -- it was so fun. you know, you had -- it was a game, basically. people could -- you'd take -- you'd be one of the crew members, right, and then you would find out what would happen to you. i was talking to someone who was at that point sitting a couple of 4-year-olds and they were twins. and, you know, one got one character, the other got the other character. and one of the twins died, was eaten, and the other survived. it was a huge hit. >> oh, thank you. for those in the audience who

may not have had a chance to see it. when we presented the story of the "essex" in 2015, we looked at, what are the core ideas of the story we want our visitors to come away with? and that the story involves a journey was a key part of what we wanted to communicate. and it involved real people. again, getting back to that connection to real people in the past. and so we built a reproduction boat of the right scale. >> yeah. >> that you could sit in and read quotes -- a projection of quotes, as the disaster gets worse and worse and there was a big mural of the ocean. and we did, we had this path on the floor that you could follow their journey, you know, to the whale, past the whale, the boat split up, leave people on henderson island, and then these cards. at each of five or six places, your card, which would say, oh, look, i drew the card of, you know, charles ramsdell, did he stay on henderson island? oh, no, he didn't.

he wasn't one of those men. was he one of the first people -- that's exactly what would happen, is that you as the visitor could see what happened. and, of course, many visitors, they rifled through the cards. there were 20 men, 20 cards. they would always be looking for owen chase, george pollard. so, those cards went really fast. but you could get randomly any of them. but, yeah, very much foreground and that sort of horrible journey and getting your mind around what that might have been like. and these were real people and the survivors came back and had whole lives at sea, actually. and, you know, we had artifacts from that. >> and, you know, some of the great artifacts are the houses in which these people lived. you know, we're living in a museum in many ways. and i live off orange street and the owen chase house is still there. the nickerson -- the house thomas nickerson was in, which

was then a guest house. nantucketers no longer hunted whales. they fished for tourists. and thomas nickerson had this guest house. it's on north water street and has -- is part of the harbor house complex. there's the pollard house there on center street. and, you know, it's just amazing. you can go to, you know, the cemetery and, you know, there's all these -- the owen chase's grave is there. and i had a remarkable opportunity to take two of owen chase's descendents, a sister and brother, to owen chase's grave, even before the book came out. and they have his portrait that is now here. >> it's on loan here. >> on loan here. and so, you know, it -- it sort of brought home to me, you know, this is a local story. you know, this is local history,

in one sense for me, but one of the aims i had one "the heart of the sea" was to take what i had learned as local history in my book about nantucket "a way of shore" and try to make it more universal, to really focus on this as an endurance situation as, you know, what happens to people in the worst of 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. that's what it is, it's the human element. if we don't engage with history emotionally, it really ultimately means nothing to us. >> yeah, absolutely. well, we've been talking now for about 50 minutes. we have questions that people have been submitting. i think maybe if you're -- >> sure. >> -- that will segue -- we'll 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, both sperm whales when sometimes referred to as carpenterfish, and from loud clangs they make to announce themselves to potential mates. there is the story of whether the hammering of repairing the damaged whaleboat may have attracted the whale that attacked the "essex." and so the person asks, has there been any research into whether it really was the repair work to the whaleboat that led to the attack? >> yeah. well, when i was researching the book, i reached out to hall whitehead, one of the foremost sperm whale experts on earth. he and his wife and their small children took a sailboat and basically sailed very close to where the "essex" went down with very high-tech listening devices under the water -- underwater, listening to -- they were really the first ones to develop a good sense of how sperm whales communicate.

and, you know, and it's through this process of clicks and the females have clicks, males have more like a clang. it's like a boom kind of sound. and, you know, and clearly they have -- it's a real language. almost morris code like sequence of clicks. and so, i asked -- i emailed hal and said, you know, explained to him as best i could from the evidence what happened. what did he think the whale happened? he said, well, you know, who knows. he said, you know, because he was very familiar, obviously, with following the whales. he tended to think maybe the whale just sort of blundered into the ship by accident and then got angry and came after it. you know, these are -- sperm whales -- male sperm whales are very territorial. and so they're like elephants,

male sperm whales will attack each other and fight over the females in a pod of whales. and, you know, was -- who knows. it's ultimately -- i have not heard a definitive, you know, explanation for what happened. you know, unless we can find a descendent of that sperm whale who has the oral traditions grandad used to tell, i don't think we'll know that. and that's one of the great things about the story. at the center of it is this question, what was the whale thinking? you know, chase, in looking at the whale attacking, you know, coming at them, you know, felt in his account, feels like, you know, there's something going on. melville channels this. you know, there's some kind of malevolent deity or -- you know, what is going on there that made its way into "moby-dick."

you can only imagine. but we'll never know. and i think that's what lends -- gives history real legs. where something of huge importance happens, but ultimately we'll never really, really know what exactly what happened. >> yeah. well, that's actually 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. and the question basically is, how do we know they're telling us the truth? >> oh, that's the question for -- when it comes to all evidence in history. and, you know, the one thing when it comes to narratives, you know, people's accounts, when it comes to letters, are they're diaryists, they're the person telling their side of the story. when it comes to chase's

account, it's 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. what's interesting about -- and usually as historians you want something that is recorded as close to the event as possible. when things are still hot, before people had a chance to think too much about it. particularly if theiring they're their own reputation. that's interesting about that letter describes pollard's first account. you know? 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 own account. and so that's suspect. you know? but on the other side, he had had the chance to talk to other survivors, you know, get

information that chase may not have had. also he's coming from a different perspective. he was 15. he was a cabin boy. he had no great professional stake in what happened, and yet -- so what he reveals are details about what happened during the initial collision that chase chose not to include. that the whale after it first collided with the side of the ship ended up on the side of, floating, stunned. knocked out, beside the ship with its tale very close to the rutter, and chase had the opportunity to pick up a killing lance, you know, this 18-foot spear and motion to kill the whale that attacked the ship. then he realized the tail was so close to the rutter that if provoked this whale could take out this steering device and this would be disastrous, as

nickerson says. if he knew what was going to happen he would have risked losing the rutter, but chase makes no mention of this. it's interesting. so, you know, in that instance i tend to believe, you know, nickerson on this. i don't think he's making that up, and he had great respect for chase. he was in chase's whale boat when they were finally rescued. on the other side, nickerson claims they never had to eat anybody else nap it was the bread that kept them through when chase provides clear evidence that, you know, there was, you know -- they were reduced to survival cannibalism. nickerson was an old man who didn't 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 been. what they said. and ultimately do your best to

figure out what happened on your own judgment, and, you know, that's why people need to return to these stories over and over again. there's no such thing as a definitive account of any historical event, particularly was we move through time and people are interested in different kinds of things. you know, we look back at our, you know, interested in telling the story in different ways. >> yeah. and, in fact, one of the other questions here is asking about, you know, other differences between chase's and nickerson's narratives because they're written in different times. i'll address that, if you don't mind. you know, it's -- it's so fascinating to read nickerson's account, again, written later in life. clearly has chase's account on his desk. >> yep. >> and he -- he's reading that and it's a prompt to memory. and then he fills in other details. or he chooses not to engage with certain things that chase says that he, you know, again with the bread versus resorting to

cannibalism. really what chase -- or what nickerson does is just fill in all of this detail from the perspective of the 15-year-old boy, instead of perspective of the 20-some-year-old officer with a career still to do? >> yeah. >> and, you know, they make a really interesting study that way. in fact, widely available. anybody can read these sources. nickerson's journal is actually in our collection, digitized and available toll our website for anybody who wants to read it. >> it's highly readable. it really is. it's a nice script, and the -- the images are just amazing. and, you know, just think nap must have ban pretty traumatic process for nickerson, to relive this thing and record it and write it all out. and, you know, which makes it an interesting process. >> yeah. >> for any event. >> another question is asking about the island that they

stopped at for the week. on their voyage. >> yes. >> you know if they didn't nope the name of the island or were on the wrong island, how did the rescuers now where to get them? do you want me to answer that or do you want to talk to that one, too? >> yeah. take it away. >> yeah. they get to this island, and they use what navigational equipment they have to take a, you know, figure out where they are. and they open their copy of boutitch, new practical navigator. the bible for navigators, and they look up, and it says they're at ducie's, or however the name of the island -- that's where they think they are. when the three men stay behind and everybody else goes on, pollard and everybody else are perked up they hire a british vessel headed across the pacific. they pay them a fee to stop at ducie's island and pick up these three men.

the captain says, i can find that. i knee where it is. i'll go get them. he same there's. nobody's there. no evidence that anyone has been there but he knows this area of the pacific enough to know there's another island across the verizon that's not there and henderson, that's where the men were. >> yeah. really interesting is henderson island has since become a kind of a vortex for plastic. floating plastic. and so it's -- i think it has to do with why the "essex" guys ended up their anyways. the currents converge on this island and kind of why these ththree whale boats ended up there, and the beach where they landed is now just full of plastic garbage. it's -- you know, this -- this one virgin island, and it was virgin island when i was -- when i -- you know, not a virgin

island, but absolutely pristine back when i was writing in "the heart of the sea" had great fortune to run across a scientific study of the ecology of henderson island. a group of scientists that lived there, spent an amount of time. all sorts of photographs. hugely impressive and helpful to me and then to see now in the last two decades what's happened to that place is just heartbreaking. >> i think time for just maybe one more. and are there any other examples after this of whales attacking whaling ships? >> good question. yes, there are. and, you know, the question is, what was happening here? there was -- were the whales getting more aggressive as they figured this out? you know, also the possibility that, you know, plenty of

whaleships prior to "the essex" that never made it back. had they been destroyed by a whale beforehand? it didn't happen a lot by any means but it did happen. while melville was writing "mobey-dick," revising it, actually, in the summer of 1851, there was word came to him of -- of a whaleship that had been attacked by a whale. >> and the alexander disaster. >> alexander. >> yes. >> and he would write a letter, i think to hawthorne would write, has my evil write raised this monster? talk about, whoa, man! when i was researching "in the heart of the sea" i explored every instance in which a whale, we had recordings of whales and whales attacking ships. even accounts during world war ii of sperm whales attacking

metal naval ships. you know. then in a group. who knows what behavior inspired that? but it did happen. it didn't happen a lot. but, you know, it was -- it was the whalers worst nightmare. if every bull sperm whale decided to attack a ship it would make it very hard for someone the wooden whaleship to whale. >> absolutely. we've reached the end of our time here this evening. thank you, everyone, for joining us this evening. for michael harrison and we are delighted to have had this conversation about "the essex" disaster on the 200th anniversary of the event itself and thank you. >> absolutely. >> really appreciate it, and thanks again to the nha, because without this organization, i couldn't have written a book, and it all of nantucketers owe the organization a huge debt of

gratitude. thank you very much, and thank you all for joining us. we really appreciate it. xwashgs weeknights this month featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span3. tonight from thomas jefferson's books to "saturday night live"'s parody of joe biden talking how popular culture influences presidents and in turn presidents leave an imprint on the culture. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. we're watching american hstry tv every weekend on c-span3 explore our national past. american history tv on c-span 3 created by america's television company and today brought to you by these television companies who provide american history thv, tvviewers as a public

service. during a period of are the 19th century, nantucket off the coast of massachusetts was a hub for whaling around the world. peggi godwin of the nantucket historical association discusses the history of whaling and the impact it had on this small island community. the nantucket historical association hostsed this talk and provided the video. >> good evening, everyone. welcome to the nantucket historical association's webinar on the whale hunt. and i'm very excited about presenting this to you tonight. we have over 230 people participating, which is absolutely shocking. we're just delighted. so we're going to be talking tonight about what it was like on a whale hunt. this presentation will last about 20 minutes. and after that i'd be more than happy to take any questions that i hope i can answer for you. so i think we're just about ready to begin. so welcome, and i'm