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
5 4 3
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
910.4´5—dc20 90-38190
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
George Pollard, Jr.
The Other Survivors
Chapter Five: Telling the Story
The Authorship and Publication of Owen Chase’s Narrative
Herman Melville
Accounts and Borrowings
A: Herman Melville’s Annotations and Markings in His Copy of Owen Chase’s Narrative
B: The Story of the Essex Shipwreck Presented in Captain Pollard’s Interview with George Bennet
C: Thomas Chapple’s Account of the Loss of the Essex
D: March 7, 1821, Letter of Commodore Ridgely to the Secretary of the Navy
E: The “Paddack Letter” on the Rescue of Captain Pollard and Charles Ramsdell
F: Report of the Essex Shipwreck and Rescue in the Sydney Gazette, June 9, 1821
G: Table of Islands from Bowditch’s Navigator
ILLUSTRATIONS
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
Map of the Essex adventure
Commodore Charles Goodwin Ridgely
By permission of Mary Kent Norton; photographed courtesy of the Frick Art Reference Library
U.S.S.
