- Welcome to Ruining History.
Today we've got a whale of a tale.
- Wow that was a lot of energy coming to that one.
- Yeah.
- Is it about a whale?
- Uh, maybe.
- Is it Moby Dick?
- It inspired Moby Dick.
- Oh shit. Dope.
(triumphant music)
- So, today we're gonna be learning about
the voyage of the Essex, which is a ship.
- Ooooh!
- And a place in London.
- Essex.
- And Wessex.
- Wessex?
- There's two? Wait.
- There's a song by someone named Frank Turner
and I think it's Wessex he's from.
I'll talk about it later.
- It might just be.
- Can I look it up?
- Yeah, look it up.
- Alright, hold on.
- Yeah, I've never totally understood what
the reasoning is for killing whales.
- Whale oil.
- 'scuzi?
- It was used for candles, bunch of oil.
- Wax, just in a whale?
- I'm not an expert.
I don't know where it is in their body.
- Wessex, bitch!
I knew it!
(laughing)
- [Narrator] In the early 19th Century,
the world came down with a serious case of whale fever.
That's not to say that people loved whales.
People actually loved murdering whales.
I know, the US was especially big on the practice
as by 1846 their fleet of about 640 odd whaling ships
was roughly tripled in the number of whaling ships
in the rest of the entire world.
According to author, Richard Ellis,
whaling was seen as an admirable career
throughout the 1800s and whale products were in high demand.
For instance, the whale's intestinal slurry,
called ambergris, was used to make high end perfumes.
Whalebone, or baleen, was used to make corsets,
hoop skirts, fishing poles, and umbrellas.
And sperm oil was a hot commodity
for use in lamps and machinery lubricant.
So yeah, just murdering whales left and right.
With all that in mind, today we're gonna follow
the fairly unique journey of one whale ship, in particular.
And buckle up, because we are in for some choppy waters.
On August 12, 1819, the Essex set sail
from a port in Nantucket on a two and a half year
whaling voyage with a crew of 20 men,
under the command of 29 year old captain, George Pollard Jr.
The Essex was a fine ship, assembled out of white oak.
She's 87 feet in length and supported three masts.
She was equipped with smaller whale boats,
as was customary for the trade,
that measured 20 feet in length.
- So this had to be big because you had to store
the whale, I'm assuming?
- Yeah
- And other smaller ships.
- They probably chop it up
- In the water?
- No
- Yeah, you have to put it on something to chop it up.
- How would you lift the whale?
- I guess you don't have cranes
- Maybe a pulley system?
- Like a pulley system with a giant mast?
- How many people?
- They got a crew of 20.
- Was he the oldest guy?
- A crew of 20 people can't life a whale
- Can't lift a whale.
- So these are sperm whales, they are not enormous.
- How big we talking again?
- Ahem. How big is a sperm whale?
- Oh shit.
- Okay.
- Nope, it just said how big is a sperm.
(laughs)
- [Narrator] Two days into the voyage,
the ship endured a sudden violent squall,
first mate, Owen Chase, describes the story being
"accompanied with vivid flashes of lightning
and heavy and repeated claps of thunder."
Just basic storm stuff.
When all was said and done,
the squall damaged the top gallant sail,
destroyed two of their whaling boats,
and nearly sank the ship entirely.
But the crew pressed on.
There was, after all, money to be made.
- It's like The Deadliest Catch.
- Yeah
- That's all I'm imagining.
- Confession -- is going to the little confessional booth
back in the day, they write in the log:
I fucking hate Jerry, he sucks.
- Yeah.
- Fucking Jerry.
- I did read that you would generally expect to lose
at least one person on these voyages
(laughs)
- That makes sense.
- And then there was 19
- Lose in like they die?
- Yeah.
- Such is travel back in the old days.
- [Narrator] Five weeks out to sea
and the Essex and her crew reached Cape Horn,
way down there at the bottom of South America,
you see it.
From there they swung around to cruise the coast of Chile.
And according to the account of the first mate,
business was a-boomin'.
(laughs)
- That's funny.
- Just a guy going, "hey, a-business is a-boomin"
(laughs)
- He's not Rodney Dangerfield.
(laughs)
- Business is boomin'.
- Look at my suit, it's beautiful
- It's made of whale
- Oh yeah, I have whale oil up the wazoo.
- [Narrator] They took down eight spermaceti whales,
racking up 250 barrels of oil.
From there, they head to Peru, 550 barrels.
- How many barrels per whale?
- Well, let's do the math here.
- UGH
- Thank you
- For eight whales, they got 250 barrels
- But you said this barrel haul was off one trip, right?
So that means they at some caught eight different whales,
there is no way that they could store that many whales.
That's too may whales.
- I have a question.
Have we gotten to the point where history
has been ruined yet?
- It sounds pretty ruined.
- Yeah.
(laughs)
- So we were terrible
- [Narrator] Despite these hauls,
Captain Pollard set his sights on the whaling grounds
of the south Pacific.
And they soon found themselves in the Galapagos Islands
where they restocked and also, reportedly,
captured about 360 hundred-pound tortoises.
Because why not?
- No, that's where they all went.
There's only like two Galapagos,
or one Galapagos turtle left.
- Really? Well they took care of a lot of them.
- Drop it.
- What are they gonna do them, play Frisbee?
- Well, they just wanted them.
- Turtle soup.
- And their shells make nice bowls.
- [Narrator] Chase said of them,
"These turtles are a most delicious food:
they are strewed over the deck, thrown under foot,
or packed away in the hold.
They will live upwards of a year without food or water."
Before departing from the Galapagos, as a good prank,
I guess, a crew member started a fire on Charles Island
where the Essex had been anchored.
Things got out of control, the fire spread rapidly,
and the crew barely escaped.
They left the island a blackened wasteland
and could still see the smoke
after having sailed away from it for a day.
It's thought that the fire
actually caused the Floreana tortoise
and the Floreana mockingbird to go extinct.
Boys will be boys.
- Where the fuck was Charles Darwin?
Why wasn't he doing anything?
- D-dawg, he was studying.
- Yeah
- It seems like a ship full of Logan Paul's.
(laughs)
- Oh my gosh.
- That is an actual nightmare
- What if we steal all these fucking turtles?
(laughs)
That's funny as fuck.
We'll set this place on fire.
- Hell yeah.
- Steal all these god damn turtles.
Oh my god.
- [Narrator] After that, things went smoothly
for a couple of month.
In November of 1820, more than a year into its voyage,
the crew of the Essex were undergoing another routine day.
Whale boats where out harpooning
and first mate, Owen Chase, had stayed on the ship
to make summer pears.
As Chase details in his firsthand account:
"I was in the act of nailing the canvas,
when I observed a very large spermaceti whale,
as well as I could judge about 85 feet in length;
he broke water about twenty rods off our weather-bow
and was lying quietly, with his head in a direction
for the ship.
He spouted two or three times, and then disappeared."
"His appearance and attitude gave us at first no alarm;
but while I stood watching his movements,
and observing him but a ship's length off,
coming down for us with great celerity,
I involuntarily ordered the boy at the helm
to put it hard up...."
(laughs)
- That's a ship term
- Garrick's eyes just went so wide.
- All of these ship terms sound super sexual.
- Yeah, because they are all trying to fuck each other.
(laughs)
- [Narrator] "The words were scarcely out of my mouth,
before he came down upon us with full speed,
and struck the ship with his head.
The ship brought up as suddenly and violently
as if she had struck a rock, and trembled
for a few seconds like a leaf."
- You took my family, you son of a bitch.
(laughs)
- He went Liam Neeson on your ass.
- Yeah, I rode Liam Neeson --
- He's like "I loved one of those turtles"
- In them.
- And the whale loved the turtle.
- Obviously though, there were survivors, though,
because this is being told by somebody
- Yeah.
- And dead man tell no tales.
- They tell no tales?
- Yeah.
- No, they don't tell tales.
They are dead.
- I thought you believed in ghosts?
- Oh shit, yeah.
What about that, idiot?
(laughs)
- [Narrator] The raddled crew watched
as the whale passed under the ship
and began to thrash violently in the water.
Chase writes, "He was enveloped in the foam of the sea
and I could distinctly see him smite his jaws together,
as if distracted with rage and fury."
- Well what if the whale was just a little mindless
sometimes and just liked to close his eyes and drift
and he just runs through the water
and just knocks into the ship, and was like,
"Ah, shit"
(laughs)
- Ah shit
- No, no
- Yeah, Whale doesn't have on his glasses.
- He doesn't have his whale glasses on.
Could you imagine minding your own business out in the sea
then someone just fucking tries to kill you for existing?
- You get hit in the ass with a harpoon.
- Not pleasant.
- Not great.
- [Narrator] The whale disappeared much to the crews relief
and the men got to work repairing the ship.
It's hard to say what could caused the whale
to attack a ship head on.
Zoologists agree that sperm whales are peaceful animals.
And while experts believe they are capable of attacking,
if threaten, they're more likely to dive away
from something as large as a ship.
The whale the Essex encountered
clearly was cut from a different cloth.
And if the crew hadn't yet pieced that together,
they would soon.
Chase recalls hearing a man call from the hatchway,
"Here he is. He is making for us again."
The whale had returned.
This time seeming to move at twice the speed.
"The surf flew in all directions about him,
and his course towards us was marked by a white foam,
which he made with the continual,
violent, thrashing of his tail.
Chase estimated the whale to be moving at six knots.
The second strike was collapses.
After striking the bow, the whale disappeared.
This time for good.
And the crew were left with a sinking ship.
The Essex was taking on water so rapidly
that the crew only had time to lower the remaining
whale boats and gather what supplies they could.
- Funny how these guys seem so badass
when they are just hunting the whales,
but one whale charges at them and the fold
like a god damn lawn chair.
- Yeah.
- Were there still turtles on that ship at this point?
- Yeah, those turtles are dead.
- They're dead. They drown.
- No they can could -- they won't drown.
- Tortoises don't swim.
- Dang.
- They're not sea turtles.
- That sucks.
- These are tortoises.
- [Narrator] Captain Pollard returned on his whale boat
to find the Essex on it's side.
"He was so completely overpowered with the spectacle
before him that he sat down in his boat,
pale and speechless."
There were now 20 men in three whale boats,
about 20 feet in length.
By Chase's estimate,
they were more than 1,000 miles from land.
- Whhoooa.
- Good shit.
- Oh good mama.
- I mean they had this coming.
- Yeah, we all agree.
- Yeah, for sure.
- They burned an island, stole a hundred tortoises,
and killed eight whales. Yeah.
- [Narrator] Closes to the wreck of the Essex
are the Marquesas Islands and the Society Islands.
Captain Pollard thought these were good options.
The crew begged to differ.
They'd heard rumors of cannibalism on those islands
and thought it better to travel towards Chile or Peru.
Perhaps hoping another whaling ship might rescue them.
And so they sailed eastward.
For the record there weren't any cannibals on those islands.
- No, they probably would have had a nice little life.
- Yeah.
- They probably would of.
- Fucking idiots.
- Just trying to avoid cannibalism, you know?
- Honestly, I would start a rumor of cannibalism
if I went to an island and I was like,
"I don't want a bunch of people coming here,
this is my fun island that I'm gonna come to"
and be like, "Oh yeah, there's tons of cannibals.
I wouldn't. And you can't even outsmart them."
They have it on lock.
- And they don't even taste good themselves.
- "You can't even outsmart them"
- [Narrator] They set off in three whale boats.
One piloted by Captain Pollard.
One by first mate, Owen Chase.
And one by second mate, Matthew Joy.
They were stocked with two months worth of rations.
It wasn't long before the food supply
became saturated with salt water,
dehydrating the crew as they at their rations.
- I feel bad for the few of them on there who were like,
" I just need to make some money for my family."
- Yeah.
- And then you have a couple of those d-bags like,
"let's burn the island"
Chad, stop it. Stop it!
- Yeah
(laughs)
- You ruined it in my mind, I was imagining them going,
"yeah, burn it down! Burn it down!"
now I feel bad for some of them.
- No, I think there is one, sort of like,
"oh man, I wish you guys wouldn't. Oh jeez.
Too bad I'm too small."
- [Narrator] Days passed, and passed, and passed.
And two weeks later, a sign of hope.
The crew spotted an island, Henderson Island.
Imagine their disappointment to find it barren,
offering them refuge for only a week
before it had been completely striped of resources.
- I love it.
There is nothing better than the slight window of hope
only for it to just close on your face.
- Yeah.
- Unbelievable.
- Too bad they couldn't eat their whale oil, huh?
(laughs)
Fucking douche bags.
- [ Narrator] The men had no choice
but to get back in their boats.
Or they had some choice, I guess,
because three of them decided to stay behind.
- Do we know what happened to them?
- We may find out eventually.
- Ahhh, Shane.
- And those men --
- Wrote Moby Dick
- Were the Three Stooges
- God, I hope they get eaten by crabs.
That would be freakin dope.
- [Narrator] The sea had not become any kinder
in their absence.
It was mid-December now and the small whale boats
were beginning to take on water.
Worst, the men were reportedly menaced by whales.
Chase describes hearing them in the dark of night,
"The terrible noise of whale spouts
near us sounded in our ears;
we could distinctly hear the furious thrashing
of their tails in the water, and out weak minds
pictured out their appalling and hideous aspects."
- I can't imagine the madness that must be just right there,
tapping to get in when you're just on the open sea,
like "will I make it?"
- Oh, just starting to go crazy.
(laughs)
- Yeah.
- Ocean crazy.
- As they say, the sea-brain.
- Well with sea brain in mind.
- [Narrator] On Chase's boat,
terror was beginning to take hold.
The crew was wrapped with hunger.
And the first mate to described one crew mate
descending into madness, "he spoke incoherently
about everything, calling loudly for a napkin and water,
and then, lying stupidly and senselessly
down in the boat again, would close his hollow eyes,
as if in death."
The crew mate then underwent "the most horrid and frightful
convulsions" while he died the next morning.
Everyone, mind you, was still starving.
- Eat that dude. Eat that dude.
- Oh man.
- Eat that dude.
- It's gotta be coming, right?
- Eat that dude.
- [Narrator] The decision couldn't have been easy.
Or maybe it was.
Chase recalled, "we separated limbs from his body,
and cut all the flesh from his bones;
after which, we opened up the body, took out the heart,
and then closed it again,
sewed it up as decently as we could,
and committed it to the sea."
The meat was heated on a flat stone and eaten.
Said Chase, "I have no language to paint
the anguish of our souls in this dreadful dilemma."
- Then again, we're steal dealing with whalers.
He might be inflating this.
- Yeah.
- True.
- I wonder if they were ever talking about
how they'd like to be cooked if they were gonna die.
- I probably would.
- I would.
- They be like, "smoke please."
- Yeah.
(laughs)
- Smoke me.
- Somebody smoke me.
- [Narrator] In the next week,
three more sailors would perish.
They too were eaten.
One of the three small boats disappeared.
And Chase and Pollard soon lost sight
of each other's boats.
February sixth.
On Captain Pollard's boat, the men had become
almost too weak to talk.
When Charles Ramsdell suggested they all draw straws
to ensure themselves another meal.
They did so.
And the short straw went to one, Owen Coffin,
who happened to be the cousin of Captain Pollard.
To his credit, the captain offered
to trade places with the boy.
After all, he had promised Coffin's mother
that he would watch over the boy once out to sea.
But Owen wouldn't have it.
Ramsdell, who had initially proposed
the drawing of the straws, shot Owen Coffin.
"He was soon dispatched," the captain recounted,
"and nothing of him left."
- I thought just to experience the drama of being
on a little ship, we could just draw straws
and see which one of us would be eaten.
- Do we all get a beard?
- We all get a little beard.
(laughs)
- You're loving this.
- I am.
- My only motivation here is to not lose
and I'm still nervous.
I hope you don't eat me alive.
- I'm alive.
- OH. Thank god.
- I think they are all the same height.
- I'm saying in my head, 'harder the cards"
- Yu-Gi-Oh
- You're going Yu-Gi-Oh?
- Oh, harder the cards.
- Oh my god, Shane, it's between you and me.
- If it's me, I'm gonna be so sad.
But that's a lot of meat.
- That is a lot of meat.
- Oh no.
- We're eating Shane.
(laughs)
- We're eating Shane.
- Yeah, you'll feed us for months.
- That's devastating.
That's a lot of bones.
- I'm gonna be real sad.
- I'm gonna be honest, I've got some meaty legs.
- Oh, I've always found them to be quite bean pole-ish
so it doesn't look like a lot of --
- My thighs, straw.
- Do you think they ate the dicks?
- Yeah.
(laughs)
They had to eat the dicks.
- That's probably pretty chewy.
- [Narrator] On February 18th, 1821,
Chases boat spotted a ship and made their way for it.
They succeeded.
After 89 days lost at sea, they had been rescued.
(claps)
- So Owen Chase, the shitty first mate, he's good.
- I'm taking this off.
- Yeah, this is a lot.
I don't know how you beard fellas do it.
- [Narrator] 300 miles away,
Pollard's boat continued to drift.
It was only Pollard and Ramsdell now.
Writer, Gilbert King, describes the heroine circumstances,
"They had only the bones of the crewmen to perish,
which they smashed on the bottom of the boat so that
they could eat the marrow.
As the days passed the two men obsessed over the bones
scattered on the boat's floor."
Almost a week after Chase and his men had been rescued,
a crewman, aboard the American ship, Dauphin,
spotted Pollard's boat.
Wrenched, and confused, Pollard and Ramsdell did not
rejoice at their rescue, but simply turned to the bottom
of their boat and stuffed bones into their pockets.
Safely aboard the Dauphin, the two delirious men were seen,
"sucking the bones of their dead mess mates,
which they were loath to part with"
- I gotta say, bone marrow is pretty tasty.
- It is really good.
- I had bone marrow once at a fancy restaurant and *muah*
- Fantastic
- A little bit upsetting that they were rescued,
just turned to look at them then started shoving bones
- That's hilarious
- It's kind of hard to come back
from eatin' all your friends.
- Yeah, but you've seen some shit.
- Been there, not an easy bounce back.
- You've been there?
(laughs)
Kate's led a life.
- [Narrator] Eight men had been rescued in total.
Seven men had been eaten.
The survivors were reunited in Chile,
where they healed up and hopefully received some counseling.
They sailed back to Nantucket.
And there they reportedly received no judgment
for their actions, as cannibalism was known
to be an unfortunate reality of maritime desperation.
That being said, Captain Pollard faced a cold reception
from the mother of Owen Coffin.
But I guess that is fair because he ate her son.
The crew members who had stubbornly decided to stay
on Henderson Island survived on bird eggs and shellfish
for nearly four months before being rescued
by an Australian ship.
Good move guys.
- Good move.
- Way better than eating your friends.
- Ugh, so much better.
Shellfish and eggs, yum.
- Drinking their pina coladas.
- They're like "oh, that ships here."
- Ohhhh.
(laughs)
- We're good.
- [Narrator] And that zany crew of that third small whale
boat that mysteriously vanished eventually turned up
on Doozy Island where they apparently got really into
being skeletons.
(laughs)
- They died. They were bones.
- [Narrator] As for the survivors, all eight of them
were returned to sea.
That's commitment.
- I feel like at that point, how else are you going
to survive in society?
The noises of the ocean you remember
are too loud to get a good nights sleep,
you gotta get back on that boat, Shane.
- Oh, okay.
- Jesus Christ.
- There all southern gentlemen up there in Nantucket.
- Yep.
- Alright, what do you guys think overall?
- That karma's a bitch, yeah.
- Well how could you ever kill another whale?
- I'd be killing whales left and right.
(laughs)
You made me eat my nephew.
- A sad, messed up story, on all sides.
And let's leave whales the fuck alone.
- Leave whales alone.
Leave tortoises alone.
- Leave your nephews alone.
- Leave your nephews alone. Good god.
- Leave entire islands alone.
- Yeah.
- I enjoyed it.
- [Narrator] Well, what a fun story, huh?
Sorry, we really shouldn't of ended the season
on a note like that.
We should have ended with the bear, frankly.
Can we get a quick peak at Wojtek?
Ah, there's that cute guy again.
Miss him.
What's the moral here?
Don't eat your relatives?
Maybe we just don't meditate on it too much
because frankly, it's a bummer.
Hey, thanks for learning with us all season.
This has been Ruining History.
Bye.
Don't kill whales.
(waves splashing)
(bird chirping)