This was a wild book. This is the story that inspired Moby-Dick: a whaling boat is repeatedly rammed by a whale and destroyed. Then, the crew - stranded in lifeboats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean - must find their way to land (which takes 90+ days). It’s a wild story, but also had interesting insights about economics, leadership, and human psychology.
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
What happened?
Whaling was one of the hottest industries in the early 1800s - almost like tech is today. Whale oil, used for lamps across the world, was in significant demand. As a result, whaling was highly lucrative - for boat owners, captains, and the crew. Just like start-up employees today receive options, all crew members of a whaleship were entitled to a portion of the profits. But instead of sitting in an office (with or without free meals and foosball tables), you’d have to labor on a ship for 2-3 years and risk your life.
American whalers (mostly in New England) hunted whale populations off the US northeast coast to extinction. As a result, they had to go increasingly far to find whales. The Essex, the ship in question, had sailed all the way out to the “Offshore Ground,” a super remote part of the Pacific Ocean. While there, it was rammed by a whale twice - an extreme rarity. The ship capsized, and the crew were only left with their 3 whaleboats1, which were essentially rowboats. The captain had two choices: to go to Tahiti, which was nearby, or try to make their way back to Chile / the west coast of South America, which was a much longer journey. Afraid that there might be cannibals waiting for them on Tahiti (which was not true), they tried to sail east to South America, which took them 90+ days. Getting back was truly a gruesome journey (so I’ll save the details for anyone interested in reading the book), but involved spending 3 months in a tiny boat while drinking a cup of water and eating ~500 calories a day of hardtack - biscuits so salty they became less salty after soaking in seawater - and watching some of your crewmates die. Ultimately, they make it close to land and are picked up by other ships.
I found the story very compelling and the writing excellent; definitely one of the best books I’ve read in 2023 (it did win a National Book Award). Below are a few of my favorite quotes.
When 15-year old crew member Thomas Nickerson gets yelled at the first time as the ship leaves the harbor:
It was more than a realization that the whaling life might be harsher than he had been led to believe. Now that the island had slipped over the horizon, Nickerson began to understand, as only an adolescent on the verge of adulthood can understand, that the carefree days of childhood were gone forever: “Then it was that I, for the first time, realized that I was alone upon a wide and an unfeeling world . . . without one relative or friend to bestow one kind word upon me.” Not till then did Nickerson begin to appreciate “the full sacrifice that I had made.”
Comparing the social structure of whales (females + kids, with grown males living on their own and returning only to breed) with that of whalers (men at sea for years at a time, with their wives running things back at home):
The sperm whales’ network of female-based family units resembled, to a remarkable extent, the community the whalemen had left back home on Nantucket. In both societies the males were itinerants. In their dedication to killing sperm whales the Nantucketers had developed a system of social relationships that mimicked those of their prey.
Hunting for tortoises in the Galapagos, which was called “turpining”:
Equipped with canvas harnesses, the seamen fanned out over the island, often following the deeply rutted tortoise tracks that crisscrossed the rocky surface, hoping these would lead them to their prey. The tortoises averaged about eighty pounds, but it wasn’t unusual to find one that weighed four hundred pounds or more. If a sailor came across a tortoise that was too big for one person to carry, he’d call for help by crying out, “Townho! ”—a corruption of the Wampanoag whaling word “townor.” In most cases, however, it was just one man per tortoise. After flipping the tortoise on its back and pinning it down with a large rock, which kept the creature from retracting its feet, the whaleman secured the ends of his canvas harness to the tortoise’s legs, then swung the animal onto his back. Walking for several miles over the uneven surface of Hood Island in 105-degree temperatures with an eighty-pound tortoise strapped to one’s back was not easy, particularly since each man was expected to bring back three tortoises a day to the ship. As far as Nickerson was concerned, turpining was the most difficult and exhausting form of work he’d ever known, especially given the tortoise’s “constant uneasiness” while strapped to a seaman’s sweat-soaked back.
Other reactions / observations
I find books about exploration really interesting from a leadership perspective. As captain, you’re expected to maintain authority and make hard decisions. You also need to “keep it together” in difficult situations with really nobody to confide in: you don’t have a board of directors, a coach, or even a spouse. I wrote about this in Endurance, where a crew was trapped in Antarctica in 1914 but made it back to civilization due to captain Ernest Shackleton, who did a better job than the captain did here.
There were other dynamics at play here as well. Captains were expected to be authoritarian and able to make decisions quickly. Mates (the officers) were expected to be tough on the crew, but also to maintain personal relationships with them to ensure cooperation throughout the hard journey. On the Essex, the captain repeatedly was convinced into making wrong decisions by his mates. While listening to others opinions is usually helpful, there are times leaders must make top down decisions and rely on their expertise and experience.
These books also feel like reality television: you have a bunch of strangers stuck in a small space with no access to the outside world. All the normal interpersonal drama of life gets magnified.
Kind of obvious, but it is truly amazing that people were able to sail to and navigate in the middle of the Pacific without GPS or computers.
This feels like 2 different books. The first half of the book is a history of the whaling industry and overview of life on a whaleship, which is pretty cool / interesting. The second half describes the nightmarish ordeal after their ship broke, which is also interesting but also kind of horror show. After reading it, it’s not hard to realize how good our lives are.
People didn’t invest in stocks, but instead in whaleships. Just like we diversify by using index funds, so did investors put their money onto a number of different ships to reduce risks. Whaling agents were the equivalent of venture capitalists today, investing in a “portfolio” of ships on behalf of individuals and taking an overall fee as well as a commission on the goods sold from that voyage (similar to the “2 and 20” model that VC firms use today).
Whaling involves sailing a big ship until whales were spotted. Then, part of the crew would get in whaleboats - rowboats - to pursue and kill the whales and then tow them back to the main ship, where they were processed.