Stove by a Whale: Owen Chase and the Essex

291 Pages·1981·23.09 MB·English

by  Thomas Farel Heffernan

STOVE BY A WHALE
OWEN CHASE
THOMAS FAREL HEFFERNAN
STOVE BY A WHALE
Owen Chase and the
Essex
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown, Connecticut
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS
Middletown, CT 06459
© 1981,1990 by Thomas Farel Heffernan
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
543
Originally produced in 1990 by
Wesleyan/University Press of New England
Hanover, NH 03755
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Heffernan, Thomas Farel, 1933-
Stove by a whale : Owen Chase and the Essex /
Thomas Farel Heffernan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8195-6244-0
1. Chase, Owen. 2. Essex (Whale-ship). 3. Survival
(after airplane accidents, shipwrecks, etc.). I. Title.
G545.H38 1990
910A'5-dc20 90-38190
€9>
I don't know when I was first in that kitchen-it was
more than forty years ago-and I must have seen the
maple chest then, but children don 't pay attention to
things like that. Children want to go out into the fields
and find hedgerow blackberries and snakes. But my wife
saw it the first time she was in the kitchen. "Oh," Irene
Chase said, "that was Howard's great-grandfather's sea
chest." "Sea chest?" I said, "-not Owen Chase's?"
"
"No, it was Owen's brother's. But that was enough;
the vessel had been rubbed and the genie came out,
hardly waiting to be asked to tell the following story,
which therefore demands to be dedicated to the people of
the chest-to Carol and to Howard and Irene Chase and
to Isabell Chase Burnett.

CONTENTS
Preface Xl
Owen Chase 3
Chapter One:
Chapter Two: Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and
Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex,
by Owen Chase 13
of Nantucket,
77
Chapter Three: Ne Cede Malis
Next Lowering 119
Chapter Four:
Owen Chase after the
Essex
George Pollard,Jr.
The Other Survivors
Telling the Story 155
Chapter Five:
The Authorship and Publication of
Owen Chase's
Narrative
Herman Melville
Accounts and Borrowings
Appendices
Herman Melville's Annotations and Markings
A:
in His Copy of Owen Chase's 184
Narrative
The Story of the Shipwreck
B: Essex
Presented in Captain Pollard's Interview
with George Bennet 211
C: Thomas Chapple's Account of the
Loss of the 217
Essex
March 7, 1821, Letter of Commodore Ridgely
D:
to the Secretary ofthe Navy 225
The" Paddack Letter" on the Rescue of
E:
Captain Pollard and Charles Ramsdell 231
viii CONTENTS
Report of the Shipwreck and Rescue
F: Essex
in the June 9,1821 237
Sydney Gazette,
G: Table of Islands from Bowditch's 243
Navigator
Chase Genealogy 247
H:
253
Notes
267
Index
ILL USTRATIONS
Owen Chase
By permission of Isabelle and Margaret Tice; reproduced
by the Peter Foulger Museum from a photograph in its
collection frontispiece
Title page of the first edition of Owen Chase's
Narrative
By permission of the Princeton University Library 15
Map of the adventure 25
Essex
Commodore Charles Goodwin Ridgely
By permission of Mary Kent Norton; photographed courtesy of the
Frick Art Reference Library 97
U.S.S. around the time of Owen Chase's rescue
Constellation
Courtesy of the Naval Photographic Center, Naval District,
Washington, D.C. 98
Capt. Thomas Raine
By permission of Maxwell Raine 107
Lydia Chase Tice, daughter of Owen Chase, and her husband,
Capt. William Harvey Tice
By permission of Isabelle and Margaret Tice 137
Capt. Joseph Chase
By permission of Isabelle Chase Burnett 141
Herman Melville's annotations of Owen Chase's
Narrative
By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. 185-204
Owen Chase's descent from William Chase 248-249
Owen Chase's marriages and children 250-251