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The Origin of Moby Dick, Part Two: Horrors At Sea · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Yah.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as
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Speaker 1: always so much for tuning in. Let's give it up
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Speaker 1: for the Man, the myth Legend our super producer, Mr
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Speaker 1: Max Williams. I'm Ben Noel. We uh we had a
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Speaker 1: reference in part one of our series on the inspiration
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Speaker 1: behind Moby Dick to whaling songs, and I was thinking,
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Speaker 1: I listened to one We're on a quick break here,
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Speaker 1: and uh, I gotta say, man, I just love him.
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Speaker 1: I love a good chanty. Well it's like, oh, you
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Speaker 1: mean way saling songs or whale songs? Whaling songs and
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Speaker 1: whale songs, some good shanty. Remember that moment cea shanties
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Speaker 1: was big. I missed it entirely. I only heard about
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Speaker 1: it like second hand. I did not participate in that
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Speaker 1: internet moment one iota. Do you guys know the story
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Speaker 1: of Stan Hugill regaleless. It's been one I've been wanted
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Speaker 1: to tell. I want to do an ephemeral episode about him,
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Speaker 1: but the problem is it's so hard to find enough
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Speaker 1: information about it. But he was known by a lot
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Speaker 1: of people. It's like the last shanty man. He lived too,
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Speaker 1: like the ninety nineties, but he had served on like
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Speaker 1: long see expeditions look at the nineteen thirties and what
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Speaker 1: he kind of like the force I to do is
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Speaker 1: sit down, right down all the shanties that were singing,
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Speaker 1: because a lot of that was his oral history. So
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Speaker 1: a lot of the shanties we have today are attributed
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Speaker 1: to him. Interesting. Yeah, I'm just I'm I'm looking in
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Speaker 1: a cursory biography right now. Wow, the twentieth century guardian
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Speaker 1: of the shanty tradition. Yeah, maybe we should, maybe we
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Speaker 1: should look into stand and scratch our shanty itch. I'm
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Speaker 1: actually working on a tune with a friend of the show,
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Speaker 1: Rowan Newby Um working on the record with him, and
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Speaker 1: it's a very c shanty escue's done cool, and it's
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Speaker 1: one that makes you want to take your elbow and
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Speaker 1: fist and just wiggle it back with like a mug
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Speaker 1: of some sort. I guess that's what that represents it. Yeah, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and we are going to talk. Uh, We're gonna talk
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Speaker 1: about the other side of the equation in the world
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Speaker 1: changing novel Moby Dick and Moby Dick. If you've ever
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Speaker 1: been forced to read into high school, or if you
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Speaker 1: ever took a class on Melville, you'll know that he
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Speaker 1: wrote plenty of other stuff. But Moby Dick is far
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Speaker 1: and away his his magnum opus, and it is about
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Speaker 1: so many things as symbol as on so many levels
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Speaker 1: with Captain ahabs monomaniacal search for the white Whale. In
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Speaker 1: part one, we learned that Moby Dick is based on
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Speaker 1: the tragic story of a real life well named Mocha Dick.
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Speaker 1: But as we're gonna learn today, the story of the
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Speaker 1: crew is also very much inspired by the real life
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Speaker 1: or deals of cruise on whaling ships, especially one in particular,
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Speaker 1: the Essex and uh, the the the the Essex did
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Speaker 1: not have a good time. So and you know, and
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Speaker 1: these were this is a hard life in generals. I
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Speaker 1: mean a lot of these folks didn't have a good time. There.
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Speaker 1: There were diseases, There were you know, squalls and all
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Speaker 1: of that stuff, and horrible conditions that would lead to
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Speaker 1: a very tenuous existence, not to mention giant creatures that
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Speaker 1: you were trying to kill that would also maybe try
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Speaker 1: to kill you back. And Moby Dick, the novel by Melville,
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Speaker 1: definitely took that tack in terms of Captain Ahab, who
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Speaker 1: had had his I believe leg amputated because of an
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Speaker 1: encounter with moby Dick, And so it was a Hab
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Speaker 1: seeking revenge on the whale, so almost like justified. But
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Speaker 1: then also, I haven't read the book in a long time,
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Speaker 1: and Ben, I believe you read it recently. The mania
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Speaker 1: that accompanies the search for revenge is also a big
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Speaker 1: part of the story, so it's not like a Hab
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Speaker 1: is justified per se in his quest to kill the whale. Yeah, exactly.
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Speaker 1: So whaling ships are working ships at this time, meaning
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Speaker 1: that you know, they only really make money if they
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Speaker 1: successfully kill and process a whale. And you're absolutely right
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Speaker 1: about Ahab's leg. So moby Dick, on a previous voice,
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Speaker 1: has bitten off one of Ahab's legs and now he
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Speaker 1: wears a prosthetic leg made out of whalebone. And the
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Speaker 1: the hapless crew of the pick Quad the ship ends
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Speaker 1: up not just going on a whaling mission, but going
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Speaker 1: like being led by this madman to hunt suicide mission
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Speaker 1: this yeah, this specific whale and they and it takes
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Speaker 1: a long time to get there. But when Ahab finally
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Speaker 1: cites moby Dick again, he goes absolutely crazy and suicide
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Speaker 1: mission is an appropriate way to say it. It's Shakespearean
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Speaker 1: in the level of of drama here, and the members
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Speaker 1: of the crew gradually kind of realized that that's part
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Speaker 1: of it too. You know, call me Ishmael, the perspective character,
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Speaker 1: you know, who's like narrating the book. You start to
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Speaker 1: realize there's something off with this Ahab fellow, that we're
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Speaker 1: not actually on our run of the mill whaling expedition.
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Speaker 1: We're on a potential encounter with death. I mean the
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Speaker 1: white whale. You know. People use that as a metaphor
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Speaker 1: all the time for the thing that you can never
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Speaker 1: attain or the thing that you're like chasing after. But
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Speaker 1: in the book, I think it kind of represents death.
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Speaker 1: It represents death, it represents God, represents nature, it's it
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Speaker 1: represents almost every important, implacable thing. And there's there's really
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Speaker 1: now my college professor's dam is coming back. Uh, there's
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Speaker 1: a really there's an interesting thing that's almost a I
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Speaker 1: think a blink in you miss it kind of aspect
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Speaker 1: of Ahab's life for a lot of first time readers,
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Speaker 1: which is Ahab has insanity in his family. It runs
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Speaker 1: through his family. His mother has intense mental issues and
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Speaker 1: she's widowed. H and she names she names her Sunday
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Speaker 1: have she dies when he's well. And the name Ahab
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Speaker 1: means uh father's brother. It comes from Hebrew anyway, So
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Speaker 1: Ahab as this Chab was a king of Israel, if
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Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, right, Yeah, he has this um he
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Speaker 1: he has this whole wild backstory that involves uh cannibalism
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Speaker 1: and involves strange almost love crafty and adventures in the
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Speaker 1: deep before Lovecraft is really you know, on the scene.
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Speaker 1: So where does this all come from? Does it come
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Speaker 1: all come from the brilliant mind of Herman Melville? Yes,
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Speaker 1: but he didn't he didn't make all these details up
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Speaker 1: the Essex as far as Melville knows, Uh. Their trouble
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Speaker 1: on this this real life ship begins in mid August,
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Speaker 1: August fourteenth of eighteen nineteen, just two days after they
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Speaker 1: leave Nantucket. There. Now, when you go out on a
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Speaker 1: whaling voyage, you're looking at a long term commitment. This
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Speaker 1: this stretch, this mission is supposed to last two and
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Speaker 1: a half years, right, I mean it was the equivalent
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Speaker 1: of space travel back then. Yeah, Yeah, that's a perfect comparison.
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Speaker 1: And the ship is pretty big, it's eighty seven ft long.
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Speaker 1: But just two days after they leave, they get hit
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Speaker 1: by a squall that destroys one of their sales. The
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Speaker 1: top gallant sail nearly sinks the boat, which is a
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Speaker 1: lot like um, it's similar to like, uh, spraining your
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Speaker 1: ankle when you're about six yards into the marathon. They
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Speaker 1: have so much a move, not a good move at all,
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Speaker 1: but they have so much money invested in this stuff
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Speaker 1: that they soldier on and they continue. They make it
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Speaker 1: to Cape Horn about five weeks later. There's a crew
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Speaker 1: of one tea men and when they get to South America,
9:03
Speaker 1: they find the waters around the area are nearly fished out, depleted.
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Speaker 1: So they say, okay, we're going to sail out to
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Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere. We're going to sail all the
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Speaker 1: way to the South Pacific, very far from any terrestrial shores.
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Speaker 1: We're gonna anchor at Charles Island in the Galapagos. And
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Speaker 1: when they anchor there, this is gonna be very unpleasant
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Speaker 1: for a lot of fellow animal lovers in the crowd. Today.
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Speaker 1: They you know, they weren't concerned about biodiversity or anything
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Speaker 1: like that at this time, so they collect sixty one
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Speaker 1: pound tortoises, and uh, these guys are still you know,
9:47
Speaker 1: any time you're hanging out with a bunch of dudes,
9:49
Speaker 1: doesn't matter the age, you get up to hijinks. Because
9:52
Speaker 1: we're we we were fooling right, right, were prankish sort
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Speaker 1: And as prank one of the crew members sets a
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Speaker 1: fire on the island, even though it's a the dry season.
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Speaker 1: The fire spreads all these men who are under the
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Speaker 1: command of one Captain Pollard. All of them escape, but
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Speaker 1: just barely. They have to literally run through flames, and
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Speaker 1: a day after, after a full day of sailing, they
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Speaker 1: can still see smoke from this burning island on the horizon.
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Speaker 1: So they absolutely wrecked the place. This also, by the way,
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Speaker 1: wasn't that far removed from Charles Darwin's expedition to the
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Speaker 1: Galapagos on the Beagle, I think is what it was called,
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Speaker 1: the little ship that he used. That was in eighteen
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Speaker 1: thirty six. So like we were gonna we were about
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Speaker 1: to get an explosion of knowledge about these types of
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Speaker 1: creatures and their origins, you know, But but this wasn't
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Speaker 1: This was pre Darwin, so there definitely wasn't the same. Again,
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Speaker 1: I just I mentioned that in the last episode, the
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Speaker 1: same level of understanding of these types of creatures. Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: well said not at all, Like these are not scientists,
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Speaker 1: these are working mariners. And the captain is a smart guy.
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Speaker 1: He is furious. He's saying, oh, you think you're you're funny,
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Speaker 1: you set fire to an entire island. In the picture
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Speaker 1: Captain Pollard strolling back and forth, marching on the deck
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Speaker 1: of the ship, and he's saying, I swear vengeance if
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Speaker 1: I find out which one of you started that fire.
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Speaker 1: And then it seems like a pretty bone headed move,
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Speaker 1: even just you know, minus any scientific understanding of like
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Speaker 1: ecosystems and all that just kind of stupid in terms
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Speaker 1: of like, these are your potential resources that you could
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Speaker 1: used for survival and you're just gonna like set it
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Speaker 1: all on fire. What a dumb dumb That sounds like
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Speaker 1: someone trying to sabotage the mission. Frankly, Yeah, you know what,
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Speaker 1: it's it's so incompetent that you have to wonder whether
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Speaker 1: there was malice involved. If you fast forward, just as
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Speaker 1: a side note, years and years later, you'll see that
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Speaker 1: Charles Island was still a blackened wasteland and to this
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Speaker 1: very day. That fire, that prank is believed to have
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Speaker 1: been the primary cause of the extinction of two different
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Speaker 1: types of animal, the Floriana tortoise and the florian a
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Speaker 1: mocking bird, all because some guy thought he was funny
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Speaker 1: and isn't that interesting? Um. Charles Darwin, we also talked
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Speaker 1: about on Ridiculous History, was a big fan of eating
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Speaker 1: all of the animals that he cataloged, So it's almost
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Speaker 1: like he didn't fully understand the concept of extinction either,
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Speaker 1: even though he was doing things that would lead to
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Speaker 1: help us understand that. He was kind of blissfully ignorant
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Speaker 1: of it at the time when he did his like
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Speaker 1: big work. Yeah, yeah, and this is you know, if
13:02
Speaker 1: you talked to the average I guess European um, European
13:08
Speaker 1: American back in that day, they biodiversity would have been
13:12
Speaker 1: somewhat of a foreign concept to them. They would say,
13:15
Speaker 1: what do you mean, look around, there are animals everywhere.
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Speaker 1: You're being weird. You're a weird dude. Over on stuff
13:22
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. They just did a series on
13:24
Speaker 1: the galopicos reptiles, and they talk about the turtles, of course,
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Speaker 1: and part of Darwin's writing he talks about trying to
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Speaker 1: ride the turtles. So I just want to throw that
13:34
Speaker 1: in here to point out yeah that yeah exactly, and
13:40
Speaker 1: this is um So people are still learning a lot,
13:43
Speaker 1: but they're coming into these new for them environments with
13:49
Speaker 1: very specific sets of aims. They're not here to learn
13:52
Speaker 1: about the world. They're here to make a buck, right
13:56
Speaker 1: and to find a precious resource in their respective economies. Still,
14:03
Speaker 1: they sold drawn. It's November of eighty They've had a
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Speaker 1: pretty prosperous voyage. There are thousands of miles from land.
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Speaker 1: They're sending out whale boats that have successfully harpooned whales
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Speaker 1: and uh, they're being dragged along in what the what
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Speaker 1: was popularly called a Nantucket sleigh ride. Because you're you're dragged,
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Speaker 1: you're literally dragging the corpse of the whale behind you.
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Speaker 1: This is where we introduce a kid named owen Chase.
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Speaker 1: Owen Chase is the first mate. He's twenty three years old.
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Speaker 1: He stayed about aboard the mothership, the Essex to make
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Speaker 1: repairs while Captain Pollard goes whaling. And this kid, owen Chase,
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Speaker 1: is the first to spot a huge whale. He thinks
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Speaker 1: it's eighty five ft in length. And again for comparison,
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Speaker 1: the Essex is what seven feet or so? Right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: there evenly matched if if if not in favor of
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Speaker 1: the whale in terms of size. So then he sees
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Speaker 1: this whale in the distance, being chill, just doing its thing.
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Speaker 1: Its head is facing in the direction of the ship.
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Speaker 1: It spouts out of its blowhole, you know, around three times,
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Speaker 1: and then starts making a B line or a W
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Speaker 1: line you know, for the ship. Yeah, and the phrase
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Speaker 1: they use is uh coming for us with great celerity.
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Speaker 1: Celerity is just a fancy word for speed. So it's
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Speaker 1: going from zero to a hundred real quick and smashes
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Speaker 1: head on into the ship. It gives them like a
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Speaker 1: moment in the Star trek Bridge where all the actors
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Speaker 1: throw themselves around, but this is real life. There's not
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Speaker 1: a sound stage. Then the whale passes beneath the Essex
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Speaker 1: and starts thrashing in the water. And oh, and Chase
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Speaker 1: recalls and again this is something he's talking about later,
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Speaker 1: so we don't know how much he's embellishing this, but
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Speaker 1: he says, I could distinctly see the whale smite his
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Speaker 1: jaws together, as if distracted with rage and fury and
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Speaker 1: then the whale guys are so say style disappears, which
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Speaker 1: somehow is even scarier. It's super scary. And I think
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Speaker 1: I've mentioned, maybe not on this show, but on stuff
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Speaker 1: that I want you to know that I often have
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Speaker 1: nightmares where I'm floating in a vast sea and there
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Speaker 1: is some unseen, massive creature, you know, beneath the waters.
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Speaker 1: And I know that that whales are gentle and that
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Speaker 1: they wouldn't typically like come for me if I wasn't,
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Speaker 1: you know, poking at them or something. But with the scale,
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Speaker 1: there was nothing that nothing, no poke that I could
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Speaker 1: possibly poke that would you know, exacerbate something of that magnitude.
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Speaker 1: But the massiveness, the unseen nous of a huge thing
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Speaker 1: freaks me out. And um, the Jordan Peel film Nope
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Speaker 1: does a really good job of flipping that from like
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Speaker 1: the Jaws underwater fear to like the sky and you
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Speaker 1: have this creature and the Nope that hides kind of
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Speaker 1: in plain sight but also in the sky. And I
17:16
Speaker 1: thought that was a really brilliant touch to that film.
17:19
Speaker 1: Is so great. Yeah, such a fan boy for Jordan
17:23
Speaker 1: Peel in my head. He can do no wrong. Yes,
17:26
Speaker 1: so this this thing is crazy right, They've got this
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Speaker 1: crazy situation out of nowhere in their minds. They get blasted,
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Speaker 1: But keep in mind, whales are very intelligent, and this
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Speaker 1: whale has sat there and watched them do those nantucket
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Speaker 1: sleigh rides across the open ocean. So sleigh l a
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Speaker 1: y just so yeah and so so oh n. Chase
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Speaker 1: Uh is with the rest of the crew trying to
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Speaker 1: fix the hole in the ship that's left over. They're
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Speaker 1: trying to pump out the water, and then one guy,
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Speaker 1: one guy says, oh, here he is. He's making for
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Speaker 1: us again. And then Chase turns and he sees the
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Speaker 1: whale who's going so fast that his head is half
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Speaker 1: out of the water. He's coming even faster with greater celerity.
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Speaker 1: He hits the bow of the ship directly and then
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Speaker 1: disappears for good. And the water is filling filling the
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Speaker 1: ship so quickly that the crew makes the decision game time.
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Speaker 1: They call the audible and say, oh, this is this
18:31
Speaker 1: is beyond our means to fix. Maybe, so they get
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Speaker 1: all their boats that they would use for whaling turn
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Speaker 1: into lifeboats. They fill them with navigational instruments, get as
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Speaker 1: much bread and most importantly water as they can aboard
18:44
Speaker 1: before the Essex turns on its side. Meanwhile, our boy,
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Speaker 1: Captain Pollard is off on a whaling ship and he
18:54
Speaker 1: sees this in a distance. He comes back and the
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Speaker 1: Essex is ruined. So he asked this twenty three year old.
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Speaker 1: He goes, my god, Mr Chase, what is the matter,
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Speaker 1: to which Mr Chase answered, we have been stove by
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Speaker 1: a whale. Oh stove. I don't know that one, y'all. Yeah,
19:16
Speaker 1: stove as a in this sense means like smashed through,
19:24
Speaker 1: like like smashed inward. God, I just I just don't.
19:28
Speaker 1: I can't think of any analog to that word that use. Yeah,
19:32
Speaker 1: it's it's it's kind of specific. It's like um, in
19:36
Speaker 1: a really in a really violent action film, if someone
19:41
Speaker 1: punches somebody in the stern um enough that you hear
19:43
Speaker 1: the crack and it goes in, then they have stove
19:47
Speaker 1: their chest caved in their chest. There, we have been
19:51
Speaker 1: stove by a whale. Uh and at this point's they well?
19:57
Speaker 1: Have they? So? Are they already on their lifeboats at
19:58
Speaker 1: this point? And they haven't count turn the captain or yes? Yes,
20:03
Speaker 1: because because the ship is wrecked, like they're yeah, and
20:05
Speaker 1: and we you mentioned those provisions they brought along and
20:08
Speaker 1: at this point there they've also been wrecked because they've
20:12
Speaker 1: been soaked with salt water. And I can't remember who
20:16
Speaker 1: said this, it was some great poet I thing. But
20:18
Speaker 1: the idea of water, water everywhere, and not a drop
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Speaker 1: to drink because you're in this you know, vast body
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Speaker 1: of water, it's such cruel irony. Um. But it's water
20:28
Speaker 1: that you can't drink. It's not potable water, yeah, exactly,
20:32
Speaker 1: And that's maddening. And as you know, if you're in
20:35
Speaker 1: a survival situation, you can go much longer without food
20:40
Speaker 1: than you can't without water. You will die within days. Uh.
20:43
Speaker 1: So this is a terrible, terrible situation. It's like in
20:47
Speaker 1: a sitcom where the parents leave and they come back
20:50
Speaker 1: and the house is burning down. But again it's real life.
20:53
Speaker 1: Uh and borderline trigger warning here. We're about to get
20:57
Speaker 1: into some think about the worst possible way this story
21:00
Speaker 1: could go, and it's probably gonna go there, and we've
21:03
Speaker 1: teased it a little bit. But if you don't want
21:05
Speaker 1: to hear about humanity and its absolute Nader, maybe skip
21:10
Speaker 1: ahead five minutes. And that's Nader in a d I R.
21:15
Speaker 1: The opposite of Apex the lowest possible point. Not Ralph Nader,
21:20
Speaker 1: but it would be funny to see what he said here. Anyway,
21:23
Speaker 1: Ralph is not in the game yet. Uh this there's
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Speaker 1: another boat, another whaling boat that comes pie as well.
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Speaker 1: They come back to their ship that like no longer exists,
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Speaker 1: and they have no and Chase, the first mate, is thinking,
21:38
Speaker 1: these guys have no idea how bad things are and
21:42
Speaker 1: how much worse they're about to get. The crew, which
21:45
Speaker 1: again is only twenty men, is at first unwilling to
21:49
Speaker 1: leave the Essex. They just can't process that the ship
21:53
Speaker 1: is on the way out. Paulard does what captains are
21:57
Speaker 1: supposed to do, maintain calm, make decisions, maintain command, and
22:03
Speaker 1: he tries to come up with a plan. So he
22:05
Speaker 1: does some quick, very desperate math. He's thinking, all right,
22:08
Speaker 1: we got three boats. Yeah, we've got three boats left.
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Speaker 1: We've got twenty people. The closest land is gonna be
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Speaker 1: the Society Islands and the Marquesas Islands, so let's set
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Speaker 1: off for them. But this is where things start to
22:26
Speaker 1: go even further off the rails. The first mate, oh,
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Speaker 1: and Chase and the crew say, Captain, we can't go there.
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Speaker 1: We've all heard the stories. Those islands are full of cannibals.
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Speaker 1: They'll eat us. Our best chance to survive is gonna
22:42
Speaker 1: be to sail south. Now, look, it will take us
22:45
Speaker 1: a lot longer to get to land, we understand that.
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Speaker 1: But we might catch the trade winds, or maybe another
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Speaker 1: whaling ship will catch us. According to Nathaniel Philbrick in
22:56
Speaker 1: his book Heart of the Sea, the Tragedy of the
22:59
Speaker 1: well Ship Essex spoiler, we're not to the tragedy yet.
23:04
Speaker 1: There was a film based on that book because it
23:06
Speaker 1: was called in the Heart of the Sea, and it
23:08
Speaker 1: was it looked it had a Chris Hemsworth in it,
23:12
Speaker 1: played thour. I think it's not it's a Moby dick
23:15
Speaker 1: esque story, but it's not Moby Dick. But it's called
23:18
Speaker 1: I believe in the Heart of the Sea. I have
23:19
Speaker 1: to assume that it's based on this this work here,
23:22
Speaker 1: and you must be right. And I you know, I
23:24
Speaker 1: eat these stories up, I love them, but I would
23:27
Speaker 1: never want to experience what we're about to get into.
23:31
Speaker 1: Please do take that earlier disclaimers seriously. Only Captain Pollard
23:36
Speaker 1: seems to understand the danger of not trying to get
23:40
Speaker 1: to the closest land mass, and he still, I guess,
23:45
Speaker 1: in a moment of weakness a sense, and says, all right, okay,
23:49
Speaker 1: we'll try to go south. Then I see, you guys
23:52
Speaker 1: are scared of cannibals. And he probably did some even
23:54
Speaker 1: more desperate math if we're being honest, and he said,
23:57
Speaker 1: look in times like this, and I still really a captain,
24:00
Speaker 1: only nominally, I'm one man among twenty. And this is
24:05
Speaker 1: how mutinies go down, right, No doubt things could turn
24:08
Speaker 1: against him real quick if he doesn't play his cards right,
24:11
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And so here's the other thing that
24:15
Speaker 1: the author of In the Heart of the Sea noted
24:17
Speaker 1: noted here, uh, rumors of cannibalism about those islands were
24:22
Speaker 1: all over the place. But the truth is people have
24:25
Speaker 1: been visiting them all the time without incident, not even
24:29
Speaker 1: being attacked, much less eaten. Anyway, they don't know this,
24:33
Speaker 1: they don't have access to this information. So they leave
24:36
Speaker 1: the Essex behind. And the three boats they have are
24:40
Speaker 1: twenty ft long each, So that's still pretty crowded if
24:44
Speaker 1: you think of twenty men and all the supplies twenty
24:47
Speaker 1: men would need. It's terrible, Like you said, Nold, salt
24:50
Speaker 1: Water has saturated the bread, and so as these guys
24:54
Speaker 1: are eating the bread, they're getting increasingly dehydrated. There's no shade,
24:59
Speaker 1: there's an nothing to protect them from the sun. Pollard's boat,
25:03
Speaker 1: in particular, is attacked by a killer whale, and again
25:08
Speaker 1: not not like a killer whale like moby Dick, an
25:11
Speaker 1: actual species called the smaller, sleeker black ones. Yeah, cooler
25:16
Speaker 1: looking to their like the anime looking hesitations. Yeah. Orcas
25:21
Speaker 1: they get they get attacked by an orca, and it's
25:24
Speaker 1: very much not the situation you see at Sea World. Uh,
25:28
Speaker 1: Sea World is also bad. Check out that documentary. Yeah, Blackfish.
25:32
Speaker 1: So they do eventually spot land about two weeks later,
25:37
Speaker 1: and again they're very desperate there to hydrated. There they
25:40
Speaker 1: have the worst sun burns you could imagine heat stroke.
25:43
Speaker 1: You name it. It's called Henderson Island. But Henderson Island
25:48
Speaker 1: is like a pile of rocks, and so that it
25:52
Speaker 1: doesn't really help them. I mean it's like a rest stop.
25:54
Speaker 1: I guess it's a it's a place to stand while
25:57
Speaker 1: you p But after but after another week, they start
26:02
Speaker 1: to run out of supplies. As they're sailing on, three
26:06
Speaker 1: of the crew say, look, we know this is not
26:09
Speaker 1: the best land, but we would rather take our chances
26:12
Speaker 1: on land than climb back into a boat. Ever again,
26:15
Speaker 1: we're done sailing this is bs. Boats are dead to me.
26:19
Speaker 1: And we start getting into the territory of like some
26:22
Speaker 1: Looney Tunes cartoons where like I think, bugs Bunny gets
26:26
Speaker 1: marooned on a desert island and there I think, I
26:29
Speaker 1: can't remember who it is, but somebody starts hallucinating and
26:32
Speaker 1: seeing the other person as like a roasted chicken or like,
26:36
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a it's a trope. It's been
26:37
Speaker 1: done a million times, but it's based on real stuff.
26:40
Speaker 1: And if you go back and watch a lot of
26:42
Speaker 1: those early Looney Tunes cartoons, there's some gnarly stuff in
26:46
Speaker 1: those that are kind of based on more like literary
26:49
Speaker 1: sources of the time, for sure. And we mentioned earlier
26:53
Speaker 1: that they were steering clear of these islands for fear
26:55
Speaker 1: of cannibals, but oh, irony, sweet irony, they ended up
27:06
Speaker 1: becoming cannibals themselves. By around mid December, they've been at
27:10
Speaker 1: sea for weeks, more water being taken on by the boats,
27:15
Speaker 1: more creepy ocean predators menacing them in the night, and
27:20
Speaker 1: by January, their their supplies had completely run out. One
27:25
Speaker 1: person went mad, and this is what I was kind
27:28
Speaker 1: of describing with the Looney tunes. They stood up and
27:31
Speaker 1: he said, I demand a dinner, napkin and water, like
27:35
Speaker 1: as though he was, you know, not restaurants right exactly,
27:40
Speaker 1: and then apparently started convulsing and passed away. The next morning,
27:46
Speaker 1: Chase wrote, of this humanity must shudder at the dreadful
27:49
Speaker 1: recital of what was next to come, because they used
27:56
Speaker 1: this fallen comrade as means of sustinance. Yeah, they tried.
28:02
Speaker 1: They took apart his body, and they tried their best
28:09
Speaker 1: to be respectful. They were not completely heartless. Yet they
28:13
Speaker 1: took out his organs and they sewed up. They sewed
28:20
Speaker 1: up his remains as best they could, and then they
28:22
Speaker 1: gave him a burial at sea, and they ate this
28:26
Speaker 1: unfortunate sailors organs over the neck. Just the next week,
28:30
Speaker 1: three more people died and were eaten. In turn. One
28:35
Speaker 1: boat disappeared of the three, and then the other two
28:38
Speaker 1: boats lost sight of each other. On both of the
28:43
Speaker 1: boats that we still know about, the men became too weak,
28:47
Speaker 1: not just to move, but too weak to talk to
28:49
Speaker 1: each other, and the folks on Captain Pollard's boat. There
28:53
Speaker 1: were four of them left. They said, look, if we
28:56
Speaker 1: don't have more food, then we're going to die. And
29:01
Speaker 1: so on February six, eight twenty one, one of the
29:06
Speaker 1: four people on the boat, a teenager named Charles Ramstall,
29:10
Speaker 1: brought forth the the terrible suggestion that has become a
29:15
Speaker 1: trope in literature. He said, let's draw straws to determine
29:20
Speaker 1: who we have to eat next. Gets the short straw
29:24
Speaker 1: that's rough stuff, and the crew agreed. I mean, it's really,
29:29
Speaker 1: at this point the most civilized thing to do alrights
29:34
Speaker 1: nominative determinism, because the short straws drawn by a guy
29:38
Speaker 1: named Owen Coffin, who is the first cousin of the captain,
29:43
Speaker 1: and Pollard has specifically promised the boy's mom that he
29:48
Speaker 1: would look out for him, and he said he says
29:52
Speaker 1: to him, look, if you don't like your lot, I
29:55
Speaker 1: will shoot the first man that touches you. And then,
29:58
Speaker 1: according to the story, well again we don't know how
30:01
Speaker 1: much this true. Pollard even offers to step in and
30:05
Speaker 1: volunteers tribute to take owen Coffin's place jus and Owen
30:11
Speaker 1: Coffin refuses he says, well, you know, essentially says fair
30:15
Speaker 1: is fair, and they have a second lottery. This lottery
30:18
Speaker 1: is for the is to determine who has to shoot
30:23
Speaker 1: the teenager Owen Coffin, and then Ramsdall, the kid who
30:29
Speaker 1: proposed a lot shoot, He draws the short straw this
30:33
Speaker 1: time and he shoots Owen Coffin and they consume him.
30:39
Speaker 1: This is very very dark stuff. And they're at sea
30:42
Speaker 1: for almost three months exactly for eighty nine days, and
30:48
Speaker 1: the last three men on the other boat, on Chase's boat,
30:52
Speaker 1: the first mate's boat, they see a sail in the
30:55
Speaker 1: distance and they managed to make contact with an English
30:59
Speaker 1: ship called the Indian. They are rescued. Things are not
31:04
Speaker 1: going so well on Pollard's boat. There are three hundred
31:07
Speaker 1: miles away just drifting at this point, and there are
31:10
Speaker 1: only two men left, Charles Ramstall, who is now a murderer,
31:14
Speaker 1: and Captain Pollard, who is now accountable. There's a really
31:18
Speaker 1: great um entry into the Love, Death and Robots series,
31:23
Speaker 1: but I think was directed by David Fincher. It's it's
31:25
Speaker 1: all you know, c g I, and it's beautifully done,
31:28
Speaker 1: but it's like a maritime kind of horror show. Where uh, I,
31:32
Speaker 1: I don't want to give anything away. You should definitely
31:34
Speaker 1: watch it. It'since the second season, but there's a drawing
31:36
Speaker 1: of lots kind of situation and where we're like people
31:39
Speaker 1: have to essentially there's like this creature that they have
31:42
Speaker 1: in the hold of the ship and they have to
31:44
Speaker 1: start like sacrificing crew members to the creature. And there's
31:49
Speaker 1: it's very I mean, obviously all of this stuff is
31:51
Speaker 1: you know, inspiration for any number of maritime tropes that
31:56
Speaker 1: we you know, know about in literature, in fiction. And
32:00
Speaker 1: we're going to skip some of the uh, we're gonna
32:03
Speaker 1: skip over some of the grizzlier details. What happens on
32:06
Speaker 1: Pollard's boat at this point, ridiculous historians, you might be thinking,
32:11
Speaker 1: what could be grizzlier? Trust us, it gets worse. Uh
32:14
Speaker 1: So you're on homework if you wish. But we're gonna
32:17
Speaker 1: just we're gonna move to the rescue. Yeah, this is
32:22
Speaker 1: this is the line for us. Uh. Eventually, about a
32:26
Speaker 1: week after Chase and the folks on his boat have
32:29
Speaker 1: been rescued, crew member aboard an American ship, the Dolphin
32:35
Speaker 1: spots Pollard's boat and these guys are so out of
32:38
Speaker 1: it actively hallucinating on the edge of death. They don't celebrate.
32:44
Speaker 1: What they do is try to hide the evidence of
32:46
Speaker 1: their cannibalism. And like you would, you know, reasonably uh.
32:53
Speaker 1: And then so out of this crew of twenty, there
32:56
Speaker 1: are five men who survive, if you can call the
33:00
Speaker 1: depravity they had to experience being something that makes you
33:03
Speaker 1: a survivor. They get reunited and Valpariso, and eventually they
33:09
Speaker 1: sell back to Nantucket. Pollard has recovered enough to meet
33:16
Speaker 1: other whaling captains for dinner. He tells them the entire story.
33:21
Speaker 1: One of the captains goes back to his room after
33:24
Speaker 1: dinner writes everything down, and years years later, the third
33:30
Speaker 1: boat is discovered at a place called Doocey Island or
33:34
Speaker 1: d u c i e. There are three skeletons aboard
33:40
Speaker 1: um and what happened to the three men on Henderson Island.
33:45
Speaker 1: Weirdly enough, they survived. They didn't have an easy time,
33:48
Speaker 1: but they didn't have to eat each other. After four
33:51
Speaker 1: months of living on shellfish and bird eggs, an Australian
33:55
Speaker 1: ship happened by and rescued them. And the weird thing
33:59
Speaker 1: is people didn't really judge them too harshly. For cannibalism.
34:06
Speaker 1: They called it a custom of the sea. Yeah, for sure.
34:10
Speaker 1: And I mean that's, I think, honestly, the about the
34:13
Speaker 1: most empathetic way to proceed. I can't imagine judging someone
34:18
Speaker 1: for just wanting to survive and accusing them of being
34:21
Speaker 1: some sort of inhuman monster, you know, when they just
34:24
Speaker 1: did whatever they could to survive. I forget the name
34:28
Speaker 1: of the story, Ben, you might remember as a Stephen
34:30
Speaker 1: King short story about a doctor who's like marooned on
34:34
Speaker 1: a like a like a raft and he um, he
34:37
Speaker 1: cuts his own flesh and eats himself yea, simply, you know,
34:43
Speaker 1: I mean, you gotta do what you're gonna do, or
34:45
Speaker 1: you're gonna lay down and die. And you know, typically
34:48
Speaker 1: when faced with these kinds of adversities, humans don't really
34:51
Speaker 1: do that. They persevere and figure out a way, a
34:54
Speaker 1: path forward. Yeah, yeah, I do remember that. That's a
34:58
Speaker 1: terrifying story about auto cannibalism. There. Auto cannibalism, the lightest
35:03
Speaker 1: version of it would be like kids who eat their
35:05
Speaker 1: boogers or people who chew their fingernails. But really, yeah, yeah,
35:10
Speaker 1: but nowhere near on the level of this. So most
35:14
Speaker 1: of these guys are kind of forgiven, people are exercising
35:17
Speaker 1: empathy and saying, who are we to judge? What would
35:20
Speaker 1: we do if we were in that situation and we
35:24
Speaker 1: knew we wanted to survive all of them except for
35:29
Speaker 1: Captain Pollard, because Captain Pollard committed the ancient sin of
35:36
Speaker 1: consuming a family member. He had eaten his own cousin.
35:40
Speaker 1: One one scholar and this is a ghoulish term. Uh.
35:44
Speaker 1: One scholar called this gastronomic incest. I know, right, gross,
35:50
Speaker 1: and we're already talking about gross stuff. But dang, I
35:53
Speaker 1: had to talking about adding insult to injury, right I know.
35:55
Speaker 1: And you know the scholar must have been so please
35:59
Speaker 1: proud of that. I am so clever. Yeah, no, man,
36:05
Speaker 1: that was a bridge too far, dude, No thumbs down
36:08
Speaker 1: from the ridiculous History crew. But of course Owen Coffin's
36:12
Speaker 1: mother cannot stand to be around her her relative, because again,
36:17
Speaker 1: back then, they would have had other superstitions about did
36:21
Speaker 1: you like absorb his soul? You know that it would
36:23
Speaker 1: have been things like that at play and and thinking
36:26
Speaker 1: about this, you know, I mean, it's a since so
36:29
Speaker 1: deep that there's not really a specific word for it,
36:32
Speaker 1: you know, And this a nomination would be the closest or,
36:36
Speaker 1: like you know, harresy. Yeah, and so h how does
36:41
Speaker 1: Melville come into this? Uh? The Pollard spends the rest
36:45
Speaker 1: of his life in Nantucket. He dies, Uh, he dies there,
36:49
Speaker 1: and according to the story, once a year on the
36:52
Speaker 1: anniversary of the Essex wreck, he would lock himself in
36:55
Speaker 1: a room and apparently fast in honor of his lost crewmen.
36:58
Speaker 1: Which is that's it is tragic? Well, I mean it's
37:02
Speaker 1: it's it's it's sad because this would have haunted this
37:06
Speaker 1: person for the rest of their life. Oh yeah, how
37:10
Speaker 1: do you forgive yourself again? In these times where religion
37:14
Speaker 1: and all of these things run so deep, how could
37:17
Speaker 1: you forgive yourself for doing that? And how could you
37:20
Speaker 1: even call it living? You know what I mean? Right
37:23
Speaker 1: like you said earlier, you know, at a certain point,
37:26
Speaker 1: you're gonna do what you're gonna do, because that's why
37:29
Speaker 1: the human animal is sort of designed, but then separated
37:32
Speaker 1: from that and put back into you know, gen pop.
37:37
Speaker 1: That stuff's gonna follow you, you know, and your your
37:40
Speaker 1: days and your nights. But Melville did briefly encounter Pollard, yes,
37:45
Speaker 1: but but not like in any kind of serious way.
37:48
Speaker 1: It was more like in passing, right, Yeah. Yeah, And
37:52
Speaker 1: so in July eighteen fifty two, Melville travels via steamship
37:58
Speaker 1: steamer to Nantucket and he's kind of a tourist. He
38:03
Speaker 1: meets local dignitaries, he gets a look at the actual,
38:09
Speaker 1: you know, this place that he's been writing about, because
38:12
Speaker 1: remember this is the year after Movie Dick publishes. Uh,
38:16
Speaker 1: and he only I thought this was research initially, so
38:19
Speaker 1: he'd only imagined this stuff. But he was aware of
38:22
Speaker 1: these stories and on his various famous before he wrote
38:26
Speaker 1: Movie Dick. He wrote things before Moby Dick like TYPEE
38:31
Speaker 1: or type which I had read. It's a it's a
38:33
Speaker 1: story about getting stranded on an island. I think he
38:36
Speaker 1: wrote some some poems as well. He wrote some romance adventures.
38:41
Speaker 1: He was dappling in Various Dick was his big break. Essentially,
38:46
Speaker 1: he made him a household name, right. Yeah, but well
38:49
Speaker 1: after his death, people, that's how it usually goes in there. Yeah,
38:54
Speaker 1: people weren't people weren't impressed. And so, yeah, Melville wrote
39:00
Speaker 1: a little bit about Pollard in Moby Deck or like
39:02
Speaker 1: you know, specifically with regard to the event of the
39:07
Speaker 1: whale seeking his ship. So he had a little bit
39:09
Speaker 1: of historical you know, realism built in there as sort
39:12
Speaker 1: of like to set the tone right in the context, Yeah, exactly,
39:15
Speaker 1: to ground it in real events and make the story
39:18
Speaker 1: of Ahabs seem more real and on the on his
39:21
Speaker 1: very last day in this visit to Nantucket, he meets
39:25
Speaker 1: Captain George Pollard, and Pollard now is a is a broken,
39:30
Speaker 1: wretched shell of a sixty year old man. He was
39:33
Speaker 1: only twenty nine years old when the Essex went down.
39:37
Speaker 1: He actually after after the Essex briefly he captained a
39:42
Speaker 1: second whaling ship, was called the Two Brothers, and two
39:46
Speaker 1: years into his career on that ship it wrecked on
39:49
Speaker 1: a coral reef. And now he was called a jonah,
39:52
Speaker 1: meaning he was unlucky to see no owner ever would
39:56
Speaker 1: let him aboard one of their ships and not be
40:00
Speaker 1: as of incompetence because of his superstition. Right, well no,
40:03
Speaker 1: but literally they were like, no, you're you're you're bad news.
40:08
Speaker 1: Your vibes are gonna throw our whole because, I mean,
40:10
Speaker 1: we know that that maritime history revolves so much around
40:14
Speaker 1: a superstition and uh, making sure that you've got the
40:18
Speaker 1: right socks on and things. I mean, I'm sort of
40:20
Speaker 1: joking but like it was a big thing, you know,
40:23
Speaker 1: because you were venturing into the unknown. So there were
40:26
Speaker 1: these kind of like talisman's or you know, like ideals
40:29
Speaker 1: that would would hopefully protect you, and you wouldn't want
40:32
Speaker 1: to be around anyone that was seen as like bad luck.
40:36
Speaker 1: Right when faced with forces beyond your understanding or control,
40:40
Speaker 1: you want to do everything you can to tilt the
40:42
Speaker 1: odds in your favor. So that's why those maritime superstitions
40:46
Speaker 1: continue today. If you've got any friends in uh, in
40:49
Speaker 1: a navy anywhere in the world, or in the merchant marines,
40:52
Speaker 1: they'll tell you the same people take that stuff seriously.
40:55
Speaker 1: And uh, like you said, he didn't. Melville didn't have
40:59
Speaker 1: an in depth soul searching hang out with Pollard. He said,
41:04
Speaker 1: we just exchanged some words. That's literally how he refers
41:07
Speaker 1: to it. And to Melville, we know that he saw
41:11
Speaker 1: Pollard as a tragic hero. Dare I say somewhat like
41:16
Speaker 1: Captain Ahab. He wasn't gonna he wasn't gonna push him,
41:21
Speaker 1: you know, And that's honestly you got to respect that
41:24
Speaker 1: because today in the age of true crime and like
41:28
Speaker 1: getting you know, like plumbing the depths of people's misery.
41:32
Speaker 1: You would have journalists like knocking down this guy's door
41:35
Speaker 1: to get him to relive those horrors. And uh, Melville,
41:39
Speaker 1: who you know was a successful author, you'd think might
41:41
Speaker 1: be one of those people. But no, he said to
41:45
Speaker 1: the islanders, he was a nobody. To me, the most
41:49
Speaker 1: impressive man though, holy, unassuming, even humble that I ever encountered.
41:55
Speaker 1: And maybe that's where we leave the story today. Thank
42:00
Speaker 1: you so much for venturing with us on this tale
42:03
Speaker 1: of tragedy on the high seas. Uh. This is history
42:08
Speaker 1: that may sound ridiculous and larger than life here in three,
42:12
Speaker 1: but we have to remember again these were sort of
42:15
Speaker 1: the astronauts of their time. And with that we want
42:20
Speaker 1: to think, Uh, our fearless navigator, Mr Max Williams, Uh
42:25
Speaker 1: I was on the runner at all times, our research associate,
42:29
Speaker 1: doctor Zach, and oh so many other people that we
42:34
Speaker 1: we promised to do our best. Never to eat exactly, Ben,
42:39
Speaker 1: I pledge right now that don't say some some sort
42:44
Speaker 1: of maroon. I keep saying maroon because I think it's
42:47
Speaker 1: fun to say. Situation. Um, y'all can eat me first. No, no,
42:51
Speaker 1: y'all eating me first. I'm not eating y'all. Well, what
42:54
Speaker 1: you guys me first. You know what, what you guys
42:57
Speaker 1: are forgetting is rabbit starvation. This is where the honor
43:00
Speaker 1: party messed up by the check out this stuff they want,
43:03
Speaker 1: you know, episode and cannibalism. Most times, when people do
43:06
Speaker 1: decide to break that taboo, they've already been starving for
43:10
Speaker 1: so long that there's very little nutritional content in the beating.
43:14
Speaker 1: So we need to make the decision early early. I
43:18
Speaker 1: got it, I got it. Ben eat both of us
43:22
Speaker 1: so you can go on and tell our tale. Oh well,
43:25
Speaker 1: you're the best writer. It's terrible though. We're we are
43:30
Speaker 1: a package deal, gentleman. Uh, we're gonna figure something each other.
43:36
Speaker 1: Then at the same time, well, we could just take
43:38
Speaker 1: turns cutting little pieces. Oh god, this has gotten really
43:41
Speaker 1: it's time to cut. If we're not dead, we we
43:45
Speaker 1: have to just take turns. You know. You get a
43:47
Speaker 1: little flank from me, Yeah, yeah, jeez, Okay, well how
43:54
Speaker 1: about this. Let's just let's keep this these lessons in mind,
44:00
Speaker 1: and let's make sure that wherever we go there's plenty
44:03
Speaker 1: of food, you know. I yeah, oh yeah, wait, no
44:08
Speaker 1: problem solved. Yeah. Thanks to Jonathan for volunteering his tribute.
44:13
Speaker 1: Thanks Alex Williams, thanks us, Jeff Toe, what a ride,
44:17
Speaker 1: and and of course Noel, thank you so much. Man.
44:21
Speaker 1: I know that we're like behind the behind the scenes folks. Um,
44:25
Speaker 1: we've all had really busy weeks. I am kind of
44:30
Speaker 1: off off the grid a bit, but we are. We're
44:33
Speaker 1: making uh, we're making these shows happen because we love it.
44:37
Speaker 1: We couldn't do it without you, fellow ridiculous historians and Noel,
44:40
Speaker 1: I certainly couldn't do anything like this show without you,
44:44
Speaker 1: my friend, Same me, hearty, same. Let's see you next time, folks.
44:56
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
44:58
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
45:01
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.