Review: Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea

[truepenny]

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is an excellent book, excellently read, about the whaleship Essex, whose story was the inspiration for Moby-Dick--although, as Philbrick points out, the story of the Essex's crew really begins where the story of the Pequod ends: after the Essex was sunk, the crew spent three months trying to reach the coast of South America in a set of whaleboats kludged into ships. Many crew members died; some of them were eaten. One ship was lost entirely. Three men chose to be marooned on Henderson Island (and were later rescued). Five men survived to be rescued, having nearly made it to the coast of South America.

Philbrick is both a good historian and a good writer (the combination is not a given). If I were teaching Moby-Dick, this would be a great book to pair with it, for it is very much a book about Nantucket whaling. (And there's a wonderful last chapter about modern Nantucket and a sperm whale.) Philbrick is interested in causes and effects, reasons and consequences. He both deplores the practice of whaling and insists on pointing out how difficult and dangerous it was, even without being rammed by a sperm whale.



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