All reviews copyright 1984-2016 Evelyn C. Leeper.
IN THE HEART OF THE SEA: THE TRAGEDY OF THE WHALESHIP ESSEX by Nathaniel Philbrick:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/17/2012]
Before WHY READ MOBY-DICK?, Nathaniel Philbrick wrote IN THE HEART OF THE SEA: THE TRAGEDY OF THE WHALESHIP ESSEX (ISBN 978-0-14-100182-1). I had read this when it came out about eleven years ago, but I picked up a copy recently at the Half Price Books closing sale, figuring it was worth a re-read. When I saw Philbrick's WHY READ MOBY-DICK? at the library, I decided that after finishing that, I would read this--and then, what else would there be to do but re-read MOBY-DICK itself?
But first, the Essex. On November 20, 1820, the whaleship Essex, with its crew of twenty-one, was rammed and sunk by an eighty-foot sperm whale at "0 degrees, 40 minutes south, 119 degrees, 0 minutes west, just about as far from land as it was possible to be anywhere on earth." For several reasons, they had only three whaleboats instead of the usual five. They divided the twenty survivors into the three boats and then made a critical mistake: instead of heading for the nearest land (the Marquesas, about 1500 miles away), they decided to try for South America on a route covering almost 4000 miles. (They apparently were terrified by reports of cannibals in the Marquesas.)
Philbrick spends quite a bit of time giving the background of Nantucket and whaling, and describing the workings (both economic and physical) of a whaling ship. In addition to being inherently interesting, much of this helps to clarify parts of MOBY-DICK.
Of course, the real drama is what happened to the crew of the Essex after the sinking, and this is based on the memoirs of two of the survivors, First Mate Owen Chase and cabin boy Thomas Nickerson. (Well, you knew there had to be at least one survivor, else how would Philbrick have known what happened?)
Naval adventure series have a lot of fans; this is real-life adventure that should appeal to them (even without the military, Napoleonic War setting that most series seem to have), and of course to all fans of MOBY-DICK.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/15/2016]
IN THE HEART OF THE SEA: THE TRAGEDY OF THE WHALESHIP ESSEX by Nathaniel Philbrick (ISBN 978-0-14-100182-8) and IN THE HEART OF THE SEA (film by Ron Howard) are an example of how a movie supposedly based on a book may vary considerably from it. I have already reviewed the book, but I just saw the film and thought I would compare the two.
The differences start with the framing story. Herman Melville never met with Thomas Nickerson. He did meet George Pollard, but only after he had written MOBY-DICK.
The crewing of the ship is also not accurate. In the film, Owen Chase has been promised a captaincy, but instead he finds himself as First Mate under an inexperienced relative of the owners of the Essex, and he and Captain Pollard take an instant dislike to each other. In actual fact, Chase and Pollard had sailed together before (with Pollard as First Mate and Chase as harpooner), and Pollard had been on the Essex almost all of the previous four years.
The squall is accurate, including the loss of two whaleboats. The whaling scenes that follow are taken as much (or more) from MOBY- DICK as from Philbrick's book. One can suppose that similar scenes happened on the Essex, but it is clear that Howard is trying to film MOBY-DICK without admitting it.
(Note: It is true that Howard did not write the screenplay. Writing credits go to Charles Leavitt for the screenplay; Charles Leavitt, Rick Jaffe, and Amanda Silver for the story; and Nathaniel Philbrick for the book. But I assume that as director Howard also had some input--the final input--and will use his name as a shorthand.)
As an example of how MOBY-DICK has crept into the story of the Essex. the whale that destroyed the Essex was not a white whale, but the whale in the movie is. The whale in the movie also follows the survivors as they drift around the Pacific, which is inaccurate to both the Essex and to MOBY-DICK. (One of the survivors' whaleboats, amazingly, was in fact attacked by a whale, but it was a different whale.)
Another example is that there is a character on the pier in Nantucket who looks (to me, anyway) like Melville's description of Tashtego.
Because he is trying to sandwich MOBY-DICK in, Howard leaves out a lot of dramatic events, such as when one of the Essex crewmen sets a fire on Charles Island (now Floreana Island) as a prank, except that it spreads and burns the entire island, contributing to the extinction of the local tortoise. He also omits scenes of the survivors repairing underwater leaks in the old and damaged whaleboats even as they are drifting in them.
Indeed, Howard omits the ultimate irony of the story of the Essex. When the Essex is wrecked, the twenty survivors got into the three remaining whaleboats and then made a critical mistake: instead of heading for the nearest land (the Marquesas, about 1500 miles away and in the direction in which the prevailing winds would blow then), they decided to try for South America on a route covering almost 4000 miles because they would have to sail a long ways south to catch trade winds blowing in the right direction. They apparently were terrified by reports of cannibals in the Marquesas. And because of this, they ended up cannibals themselves.
On the other hand, Howard adds a very dramatic series of explosions and the sinking of the Essex. In fact, there was no explosion, and the Essex did not sink until after the survivors rowed out of sight of it. The island they land on is not Ducie, but Henderson, and while they thought it was Ducie, by the time Melville is getting the tale from Nickerson, the latter would have known the truth. And while indeed Henderson Island had a cave with skeletons in it, it was not the reason most of the Essex survivors left the island-- it was discovered by the three who had remained many days after the rest of the survivors had departed.
WHY READ MOBY-DICK? by Nathaniel Philbrick:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/17/2012]
WHY READ MOBY-DICK? by Nathaniel Philbrick (ISBN 978-0-670-02299-1) is only 127 pages long, and by my estimate under 30,000 words, making it similar in length to a novella rather than a novel. Yet it is priced at $25--and that's a problem, because people who do not already like MOBY-DICK are unlikely to pay that much to get it, and those who do like MOBY-DICK may feel there is no point in paying that much to confirm what they already know.
Of course, this is not quite fair. Philbrick is not so much trying to convince the reader to read MOBY-DICK as he is talking about his favorite parts of the novel, and how it fits into the social situation of the United States at the time it was written. But Viking has decided to make it a fancy edition, in red cloth boards, but with what appears to be some black waterproofed material--not unlike what might be used on a whaling ship--half-covering them. I have to say my recommendation is to get this from the library and save the $25 to buy a nice edition of MOBY-DICK itself.