CHASE, Owen. - The wreck of the whaleship Essex. A narrative account by Owen Chase, first mate. Edited, and with prologue and epilogue by Iola Haverstick and Betty Shepard.

London, Constable Young, (1968). Blue boards, spine lettered (spine discoloured). With map and illustrations. 128 pp.The Essex, Captain George Pollard, sailed from Nantucket on August 12, 1819, for a sperm whaling cruise in the Pacific. A dramatic account told by one of its few survivors. The whaling ship was rammed by an angry sperm whale on November 20, 1820. On the sailors terrifying battle for survival the survivors had restored to cannibalism, and a relative of the captain was killed and eaten. Herman Melville used Chase's narrative as a source for his Moby Dick.

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