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The 19th and late 18th centuries are most fondly remembered in American history as the age of the West. While the iconic struggles between European and Native peoples played out, the eastern United States was also engaged in an expansionistic battle. Off the shores of Maine and Massachusetts, as far south as the ports of Newark and Wilmington, a great naval war raged. The enemy was that ocean behemoth, the whale; the hunters’ spoils: spermaceti.
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A male sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) can reach lengths up to 67 feet and weigh over 45 tons. It has the largest brain of any animal on the planet, and teeth which weigh up to two pounds apiece. Physeter macrocephalus can attain underwater swimming speeds approaching 19 miles-per-hour. Sperm whales employ an incredibly complex communication system of clicks, and recent studies have shown that pods are organized by “dialects,” rather than by geographic boundaries as had been previously assumed [5].
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Knowing little of these facts at the time, the imagination of sailors must have run amok as they pursued their prey over the vast depths of the unknown. Picture those tiny whaling boats, rowing out from the main vessel, closing in for the kill. How vulnerable these hunters must have felt, despite the obvious advantages of man’s technology, to be hovering over a creature of such immense size and power, in their insignificant wooden floats. As any fisherman knows, even the smallest bass will put up an incredible fight when its life is on the line.
How much more intense, then, must have been the struggle between harpooner and whale; Leviathan in his mighty death throes. Indeed, these giants did not submit with a whimper. When enraged and injured they were capable of wreaking incredible havoc. The infamous white whale, Mocha Dick (Melville’s marine muse) survived many ocean brawls and was notorious for his cunning aggressiveness. Another nameless, unusually large whale, attacked the whaling ship Essex, sinking her and killing all but eight of the crew members, in a tale worth recounting here:
On the leeward side of the Essex Chase's boat harpooned a whale, but its fluke struck the boat and opened up a seam, resulting in their having to cut his line from the whale and put back to the ship for repairs. Two miles away off the windward side, Captain Pollard and the second mate's boats had each harpooned a whale and were being dragged towards the horizon in what was known as a Nantucket sleighride. Chase was repairing the damaged boat on board when the crew observed a whale, that was much larger than normal (alleged to be around 85 feet (26 m)), acting strangely. It lay motionless on the surface with its head facing the ship, then began to move towards the vessel, picking up speed by shallow diving. The whale rammed the ship and then went under, battering it and causing it to tip from side to side. Finally surfacing close on the starboard side of the Essexwith its head by the bow and tail by the stern, the whale appeared to be stunned and motionless. Chase prepared to harpoon it from the deck when he realized that its tail was only inches from the rudder, which the whale could easily destroy if provoked by an attempt to kill it. Fearing to leave the ship stranded thousands of miles from land with no way to steer it, he relented. The whale recovered and swam several hundred yards ahead of the ship and turned to face the bow.
"I turned around and saw him about one hundred rods (550 yards) directly ahead of us, coming down with twice his ordinary speed (around 24 knots or 44kph), and it appeared with tenfold fury and vengeance in his aspect. The surf flew in all directions about him with the continual violent thrashing of his tail. His head about half out of the water, and in that way he came upon us, and again struck the ship." —Owen Chase.
The whale crushed the bow like an eggshell, driving the 238-ton vessel backwards. The whale finally disengaged its head from the shattered timbers and swam off, never to be seen again, leaving the Essex quickly going down by the bow. Chase and the remaining sailors frantically tried to add rigging to the only remaining whaleboat, while the steward ran below to gather up whatever navigational aids he could find.
"The captain's boat was the first that reached us. He stopped about a boat's length off, but had no power to utter a single syllable; he was so completely overpowered with the spectacle before him. He was in a short time, however, enabled to address the inquiry to me, "My God, Mr. Chase, what is the matter?" I answered, "We have been stove by a whale." —Owen Chase. [8]
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REFERENCES
2. Whaling Ports of the 1850s. From the Whalemen's Shipping List. National Maritime Digital Library. Via PBS, at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/map/whaling-ports/. 2012.
3. Sperm Whales, Physeter Macrocephalus. NOAA Fisheries, Office of Protected Resources. http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/cetaceans/spermwhale.htm. 2012
4. Sperm Whales, Physeter catodon. MarineBio Conservation Society. http://marinebio.org/species.asp?id=190. 2012
5. Rendell, Luke, et al. Can Genetic Differences Explain Vocal Dialect Variation in Sperm Whales, Physeter macrocephalus? Behavioral Genetics 42:332-343 (2012).
6. Whale depictions by Captain Valentine Barnard. PR-145, #76; from the Collection of the New York Historical Society, 1810.
7. Whaling photo by Marion Smith, 1902.
8. Essex (whaleship). Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship). 2012.
9. Beale, Thomas. Natural History of the Sperm Whale (frontispiece). 1839.
10. Carved sperm whale tooth. Attribution unknown.
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