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 when pollard was rescued, and it would be pollard and a kid with the last name of ramsdell, found in their whale boat, they were clutching the dead bones of their mess mates. that's how it was described. and pollard would come on the whale ship of the boat that rescued him and i don't know how he did it, but he would recall the story of what happened. and it was told by a story of a nantucketer who listened to this. can you imagine the drama, this men at sea for three mungs, a living skeleton and describing how they drew lots and his much younger cousin drew the short lot. pollard said my boy, no one is going to touch you if you don't want to do this and he said 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, as they said, and ultimately would be one thing that would allow pollard and ramsdell to survive. so, this is tough stuff. and it was a hard process. but one that i will -- i feel just such an enormous debt to the island and those people who lived it. and just hope the book, in some way, d

it would say, i drew the card of charles ramsdell. did he stay on anderson island? he did not.he was not one of those men. was he one of the first people? that's what would happen. the visitor could see what happened. many visitors would rightful to the cards. 20 men, 20 cards. they would always be looking for george pollard. those cars went fast. you could get randomly any of them. very much for grounding that horrible journey in getting your mind around what it might have been like these were real people. the survivors came back and had whole lives. whole lives at sea, actually. we have artifacts from that. and some of the great art is the houses in which they live. in which he relieving within a museum in many ways. i live off of orange street. the owen chase house is still there. the nixon, the house thomas nixon was in when he was in the guesthouse, nantucket are's no longer hunted whales by this point they fished for tourists and thomas nicholson had a guesthouse that is on north water street and is part of the hardware harsh complex. there is the pollard house on center