The appeal of Dava Sobel's Longitude was, in part, that it illuminated a little-known piece of history through a series of captivating incidents and engaging personalities. Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea is certainly cast from the same mold, examining the 19th-century Pacific whaling industry through the arc of the sinking of the whaleship Essex by a boisterous sperm whale. The story that inspired Herman Melville's classic Moby-Dick has a lot going for it--derring-do, cannibalism, rescue--and Philbrick proves an amiable and well-informed narrator, providing both context and detail. We learn about the importance and mechanics of blubber production--a vital source of oil--and we get the nuts and bolts of harpooning and life aboard whalers. We are spared neither the nitty-gritty of open boats nor the sucking of human bones dry.

By sticking to the tried and tested Longitude formula, Philbrick has missed a slight trick or two. The epicenter of the whaling industry was Nantucket, a small island off Cape Cod; most of the whales were in the Pacific, necessitating a huge journey around the southernmost tip of South America. We never learn why no one ever tried to create an alternative whaling capital somewhere nearer. Similarly, Philbrick tells us that the story of the Essex was well known to Americans for decades, but he never explores how such legends fade from our consciousness. Philbrick would no doubt reply that such questions were beyond his remit, and you can't exactly accuse him of skimping on his research. By any standard, 50 pages of footnotes impress, though he wears his learning lightly. He doesn't get bogged down in turgid detail, and his narrative rattles along at a nice pace. When the storyline is as good as this, you can't really ask for more. --John Crace, Amazon.co.uk


From Publishers Weekly
With woody intonation and a suitably somber cadence, Tony Award-winning actor Herrmann reads this chilling tale of the Essex, a whaling ship that was sunk in the middle of the Pacific by an 80-foot sperm whale in 1820. The story would come to mark the mythology of the 19th century as the Titanic did the 20thAHerman Melville, for one, based Moby Dick on certain key elements of the tragedy. In Philbrick's spare, well-paced version, we learn much about how Nantucket's culture was affected by the whaling industry boom, from its economy to its social habits. But the horrific heart of the narrative details the fate of the 20 sailors who attempted to sail several thousand miles back to Chile using only three pathetic open boats. Reaching home 93 days later, only eight sailors survived the ordeal of thirst, starvation and despair. Near the tape's end, Herrmann delivers one of the finest funereal orations ever offered on behalf of seamen. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Forecasts, Apr. 10). (May) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
YA-In 1819, the Essex, a Nantucket whaleship carrying a crew of 20, began what all thought would be a normal, two-year voyage. Instead, after a year and a half of near-disasters, the ship was rammed by a sperm whale and sank in the Pacific. All hands got off in three whaleboats and were at sea for three unbearable months of short rations and little fresh water, leading to the death by starvation of some and the killing of others to provide food. One boat disappeared and the two remaining eventually became separated. When rescued off the coast of Chile, only five men were still alive, including the captain and first mate, as well as three rescued later from an island. Philbrick brings the era to life, giving readers a rounded picture of the whaling industry and its society. Relying mainly on two survivors' detailed accounts, one of which has just recently been found, he fleshes out the tale in an exciting manner that sweeps readers along. He includes modern medical knowledge of the physical and mental effects of starvation on humans. The book concludes with tales of other shipwrecks, a description of how the survivors lived the rest of their lives, and an introduction to the recent work of the Nantucket Whaling Museum. The contrast between today's touristy island paradise and yesterday's hard life will not be lost on teens.Judy McAloon, Potomac Library, Prince William County, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
After the Essex is splintered by an 80-ton sperm whale in 1820, her crew tries to reach South America in three small boats. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, W. Jeffrey Bolster
Philbrick is an uncommonly talented nonacademic historian with a storyteller's flair.


The Wall Street Journal
Fascinating...One of our country's great adventure stories...


From AudioFile
In 1819, the Nantucket whaleship ESSEX set off to sea with 20 seamen only to be attacked and demolished 15 months later by a sperm whale the magnitude of the ship! Adrift (except for a short stop at a tiny island with limited water supplies) for more than 90 days and using only celestial navigation, these God-fearing, strapping men were driven to physical and psychological boundaries. Edward Herrmann's dignity and respect for the heroic whalers is obvious as he reveals Nantucket's history in a global industry it mastered. Heart-wrenching is his portrayal of these men in their most desperate hours as starvation and dehydration forced unavoidable cannibalism. TITANIC, MOBY-DICK, and THE PERFECT STORM fans won't be disappointed! B.J.P. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Given the recent popularity of true-life adventure sagas, Viking is probably correct in anticipating major interest in this accessible narrative of the tragic 1820s whaling voyage whose central disaster was the violent encounter with a sperm whale, which inspired the climactic scene in Melville's Moby Dick. Philbrick, director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies and champion sailboat racer, is well qualified to describe the issues raised by the Essex's final whale hunt. Those issues included Nantucket's unusual commercial, religious, and social characteristics; the class and racial aspects of Nantucket whaling; whaleboat crewmen's responsibilities and the maritime conditions they faced; types of whales that Nantucketers chased; the work involved in transforming the carcasses of these huge mammals into casks of oil; types of leadership appropriate at different stages of a disaster; and the biological and psychological effects of starvation, dehydration, and cannibalism. For more than 150 years, the primary source of information about the Essex was a volume that first mate Owen Chase, later a successful whaling captain, prepared with a ghostwriter; a summary by the ship's cabin boy, prepared some 50 years after the wreck, was found and published in the 1980s. Philbrick draws on both, using the cabin boy's more class-conscious narrative to correct the often self-serving prose of the mate. A fascinating tale, well told. Mary Carroll


From Kirkus Reviews
A vivid account of a 19th-century maritime disaster that engaged the popular imagination of the time with its horrors of castaways and cannibalism. Just west of the Gal pagos Islands, the Nantucket whale ship Essex was struck on November 20, 1820, by an 85-foot bull sperm whale. Yet the sinking was only the beginning of a fantastic voyage, narrated with brio and informed speculation by Philbrick, director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies and a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association. For three months the 20 men who escaped the Essex drifted in three smaller open boats, enduring squalls, attacks by sharks and another whale, starvation, dehydration, madness, and despair, capped by eating the flesh of comrades who had begun to die offand, in one instance, casting lots to see who would be killed and eaten next. When eight remaining castaways were retrieved off the coast of Chile, they had sailed almost 4,500 nautical miles across the Pacificfarther than both William Blighs post-Bounty voyage and Ernest Shackletons trek to South Georgia Island nearly a century later. An account by first mate Owen Chase provided fodder for, most famously, Herman Melvilles Moby Dick, which took Chases description of the whales decided, calculated mischief as its central motif. Philbrick uses Chases narrative and an unpublished memoir by the ships cabin boy, as well as recent medical and psychological discoveries, to limn the terror of men faced with their most elemental fears. He also brings to life the Quaker-dominated society of Nantucket, including its ambivalence toward African-American sailors and its short existence as a microcosm of an emerging America: relentlessly acquisitive, technologically advanced, with a religious sense of its own destiny. A gripping chronicle of an epic voyage of hardship and survival that deserves to be as well known now as it once was. (16 pages b&w illustrations) (First serial rights to Vanity Fair; author tour) -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


The New York Times Book Review
A book that gets in your bones...Philbrick has created an eerie thriller from a centuries old tale.


Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm
Nathaniel Philbrick has taken one of the most horrifying stories in maritime history and turned it into a classic.


San Francisco Chronicle
[Told] with verve and authenticity...a classic tale of the sea.


Time
Spellbinding


Orlando Sentinel, June 4, 2000
Philbrick brilliantly connects modern whale research to the tale... all in a bright, wonderfully readable style, building on conflicting accounts....


Parade Magazine, June 4, 2000
... an exciting and harrowing sea story all its own, this is an epic that deserves classic status.


New York Post, May 14, 2000
... the tale is tragic, reading about it is a voyage that's well worth taking.


Fort Worth Star Telegram, May 28, 2000
...Philbrick's skillful descriptions will leave readers cringing... In the Heart of the Sea is a fine, engrossing historical work.


Rocky Mountain News, June 25, 2000
...trust us: Essex is one book you wouldn't vote off....


Grand Rapids, MI Press, June 4, 2000
There are lots of lessons in this tale. It's worth your time to read it.


Book Description
The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents-including a long-lost account written by the ship's cabin boy-and penetrating details about whaling and the Nantucket community to reveal the chilling events surrounding this epic maritime disaster. An intense and mesmerizing read, In the Heart of the Sea is a monumental work of history forever placing the Essex tragedy in the American historical canon.


From the Publisher
7 1.5-hour cassettes


About the Author
Nathaniel Philbrick, a leading authority on the history of Nantucket, is director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies and a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association. A champion sailboat racer, he lives in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
In the stirring climax to Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, the whaleship Pequod is sunk in an epic battle with a giant white whale. Contemporary readers, however, might not realize that Melville's fiction was based on an actual event: the 1821 sinking of the Nantucket whaleship Essex by an enormous sperm whale. Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea details the ill-fated journey of the Essex, illuminating a terrifying drama not included in Moby-Dick -- the fate of the survivors after their ship was sunk.

In the early 1800s, whaling brought prosperity to the quirky Quaker town of Nantucket. Competition was fierce for spots aboard the whaling ships (when it came to whaling, the Quakers were anything but pacifists). The ships would hunt whales for their spermaceti oil and would return only after filling their quota -- sometimes after two or three years, and sometimes not at all. While the whalers were away, their wives, many of whom were widowed by the sea, ran the families and the town.

Whale hunting was backbreaking, nauseating work. Of course, for the crew of the Essex, whale hunting was far preferable to the rigors and terrors of sheer survival in the vast Pacific. At the end of Moby-Dick, only one man lives; meanwhile, the Essex has 20 initial survivors. Dividing themselves into three small whaleboats, they try to maintain proximity and hope. But the endless salt water and searing sun are merciless, while the food supply and fresh water are scarce.

Hopelessly adrift, the captain chooses to aim for distant South American shores rather than the closer Marquesas Islands. The reason: tales of cannibalistic natives on the Marquesas. The decision proves ill-fated and regrettably ironic. In the grim, grisly weeks and months ahead, the sailors exhaust every available food source, even the occasional giant Galápagos tortoise. One by one, crew members starve. Finally, they draw straws, with the loser becoming the next meal. Miraculously, three full months after the Essex was rammed and sunk, two of the whaleboats are spotted, and several of the crew are saved by passing vessels. Forever changed by their epic, tragic experiences, the Essex survivors return to Nantucket, only to endure the strange legacy of having escaped death by consuming the flesh of fellow townsfolk.

By highlighting the facts behind the Moby-Dick fiction, Philbrick discovers a true story as harrowing as the recent failed ascents of Mt. Everest. Concludes Philbrick: "The Essex disaster is not a tale of adventure. It is a tragedy that happens to be one of the greatest true stories ever told...too troubling, too complex to fit comfortably into a chamber of commerce brochure." (Brenn Jones)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the Titanic disaster was in the twentieth. Nathaniel Philbrick now restores this epic story -- which inspired the climactic scene in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick -- to its rightful place in American history.

In 1819, the 238-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, the unthinkable happened: in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, the Essex was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, decided instead to sail their three tiny boats for the distant South American coast. They would eventually travel over 4,500 miles. The next three months tested just how far humans could go in their battle against the sea as, one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear.

Nathaniel Philbrick brings an incredible story to life, from the intricacies of Nantucket's whaling economy and the mechanics of sailing a square-rigger to the often mysterious behavior of whales. But it is his portrayal of the crew of the Essex that makes this a heart-rending book. These were not romantic adventurers, but young working men, some teenagers, just trying to earn a living in the only way they knew how. They were a varied lot: the ambitious first mate, Owen Chase, whose impulsive nature failed at a crucial moment, then drew him to a more dangerous course; the cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson, whose long-lost account of the ordeal, written at age seventy-one, provides new insights into the story; and Captain George Pollard, who was forced to take the most horrifying step if any of his men were to survive.

This is a timeless account of the human spirit under extreme duress, but it is also a story about a community, and about the kind of men and women who lived in a forbidding, remote island like Nantucket -- a pioneer story that explores how we became who we are, and our peculiar blend of spiritualism and violence. It is also a tragic tale of survival against all odds. Its richness of detail, is cloquence, and its command of history make In the Heart of the Sea a vital book about America.

SYNOPSIS

The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents-including a long-lost account written by the ship's cabin boy-and penetrating details about whaling and the Nantucket community to reveal the chilling events surrounding this epic maritime disaster. An intense and mesmerizing read, In the Heart of the Sea is a monumental work of history forever placing the Essex tragedy in the American historical canon.

FROM THE CRITICS

Rocky Mountain News

Yuppies roughing it for TV camera may be good for a laugh. But for a true survivor tale grittier than roaches fried over an open fire, trust us: Essex is one book you wouldn't vote off a deserted island.

Fort Worth Star Telegram

Philbrick's skillful descriptions will leave readers cringing... In the Heart of the Sea is a fine, engrossing historical work.

Grand Rapids Press

There are lots of lessons in this tale. It's worth your time to read it.

Austin American Statesman

Fans of any genre of fine nonfiction will love this elegantly written, fact-filled thriller.

Time

Spellbinding. Read all 17 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

In The Heart Of The Sea is a true story of unimaginable horror. The source for Melville's 'mighty book' is a tale told wonderfully well by Nathaniel Philbrick. — (Peter Benchley, author of Jaws)