The Ann Alexander was a three-masted ship from New Bedford, Massachusetts. She is notable for having been rammed and sunk by a wounded sperm whale in the South Pacific on August 20, 1851, some 30 years after the famous incident in which the Essex was stove in and sunk by a whale in the same area.
The Ann Alexander was a ship-rigged wooden-hulled trading vessel. She was built in 1805 by Joel Packard and Deliverance Smith at Russells Mills Village in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and registered at New Bedford on 29 January 1806. [2] Her first documented voyages were with American export goods from New York to Leghorn, Italy and to Liverpool, England after her registration. [2] [3]
It is claimed that the Ann Alexander, with Capt. Loammi (Loum) Snow of Rochester, Massachusetts, in command, encountered the British fleet a few days after its victory at the battle of Trafalgar in October 1805. [4] This first appears in print 87 years later, in a history of New Bedford, based on an interview with a 96-year-old former crew member of the ship. [2] [5] According to a later account of 1912, the ship was on a voyage from New York to Leghorn with a cargo of general merchandise, and a deck cargo of lumber that was Snow's personal property, when they met the warships off Spain. Informed that Lord Nelson had died aboard HMS Victory and that the new commander, Admiral Collingwood, was attempting to repair the damage done to numerous ships during the naval action, Snow sold lumber, flour and apples on the spot to the British Navy. [4] Ruth Ekstrom of New Bedford Whaling Museum Research Library considers that there was no 1805 voyage, which would have taken place before the Ann Alexander was registered and without the knowledge of the principal owner, but that the ship may have come across remnants of the British fleet repairing at Gibraltar on the voyage to Leghorn in early 1806 and sold goods and timber on that occasion. [2]
According to the same 1912 account, in February 1807, with Snow still in command, the Ann Alexander was captured off Rock of Lisbon on a voyage from St. Ives, England to Leghorn by a Spanish privateer, who replaced all but Snow and a mate with a prize crew, and set a course for Spain. [4] [6] She was immediately captured the next day by a British man-of-war, who replaced the Spanish prize crew with one of their own, and turned their prize toward Gibraltar. Just short of landfall, they were captured again by another Spanish privateer and taken to Algiers. Upon landing, Snow immediately reported the previous British prize captain for piracy, preventing the authorities from knowing the ship's latest seizure was by Spain. The Algerian authorities allowed him to take possession of his ship and proceed to Leghorn. [4] It was later reported in June 1807 that the Ann Alexander, coming from Leghorn, was detained by the British at Portsmouth. [7]
Under the command of Captain John Deblois, the Ann Alexander left New Bedford on June 1, 1850, for the whaling grounds in the Pacific. After taking on about 500 barrels of oil, she rounded Cape Horn in January, 1851. After taking on provisions in Chile and dropping a sailor at Paita, Peru, she headed west to the "Offshore Ground" in August, about 2,000–3,000 miles off the South American coast where more whales are likely to be located. In the Ann Alexander's case, she resumed the hunt at the latitude of 5° 50′ south, and longitude 102° west. [4]
On August 20, the ship dropped two whaleboats; the one commanded by the first mate harpooned a whale. After hauling the tethered boat on a Nantucket sleighride, the whale turned, opened its jaws, and attacked and destroyed it. The second boat, captained by Deblois, rowed to the site and saved all six crewmen.[ citation needed ]
At this point, as there were 12 men in a single boat, the waist boat was launched from the ship, which was now some six miles off. The crewmen were divided between the two boats, and it was decided to attack the whale again with the waist boat, under the first mate's command, in the advance. When the whale saw the boats returning, he attacked again, this time destroying the waist boat. Deblois rescued the crew for a second time and attempted to return to the Ann Alexander in the last remaining boat. The wounded whale again rushed the boat and passed within a few cables of it, but did not directly attack it.
Once the whalers were aboard the Ann Alexander, a smaller boat was launched to retrieve the whaleboat oars, and Deblois decided to hunt the whale from the safety of the ship. Another harpoon was sunk into its head, and after a feint towards the ship, the whale seemed to disappear under the surface. At this point it was nearly sundown, so Deblois decided to abandon the pursuit. Moments later, the whale reappeared, moving at a speed of about 15 knots (a little over 17 mph), towards the ship, which was making only five knots. The whale rammed the slower-moving ship, which was unable to outrun or avoid it, and put a hole in the hull of the ship, below the waterline some two feet from the keel. Like most ships of that time, the Ann Alexander carried a large amount of pig iron as ballast, so in an attempt to keep her from sinking immediately, Deblois ordered the crew to cut away the anchors and throw all heavy metal cables overboard. The crew only succeeded in cutting away one anchor and cable, and the ship began to sink rapidly. Deblois made his way to the cabin, where he seized a sextant, chronometer and chart. A second attempt to obtain anything beyond the provisions and water that were being loaded into the remaining boats was fruitless, as the ship was almost completely heeled over and flooded. The 22 crewmen had no choice but to abandon ship, with Deblois, the last to leave, being forced to swim to the closest boat. [8]
It was soon discovered that they possessed only twelve gallons of water and no food at all, and the boats, containing eleven men each, leaked and had to be bailed out throughout the night. The next day, seeing that the Ann Alexander had not yet sunk but was on her beam ends, Deblois went on board to cut away the masts with a hatchet, in the hope this would lessen the drag. The ship partially righted itself, and the crew, using spades, were able to cut the foremast anchor chain, which helped bring her onto a more even keel. Using ropes tied around their waists, the whalers then lowered themselves over the side and cut holes through the decks to get to the food stores, but obtained only five gallons of vinegar and twenty pounds of waterlogged bread. The ship became unstable, so they returned to their boats and rowed away.[ citation needed ]
They had water rations for only a few days, but Deblois reckoned that if they headed for a northerly latitude with more rainfall they might survive. Two days later, at around 5 p.m. on August 22, they sighted and were rescued by the Nantucket whaler Nantucket under the command of Captain Gibbs. A last attempt to retrieve anything from the Ann Alexander was abandoned due to rough seas, and the crew was eventually landed in Paita on September 15, 1851. They all returned to New York via the schooner Providence on October 12. [8]
Just a few months later, October 18, 1851, and November 14, 1851, the first editions of Hermann Melville's great whaling novel Moby-Dick , inspired by the Essex attack, were published in London and New York City.
Melville commented, "Ye Gods! What a commentator is this Ann Alexander whale. What he has to say is short & pithy & very much to the point. I wonder if my evil art has raised this monster." [9]
Weak with infection from the two harpoons and pieces of timber from the attack embedded in its head, the whale was caught and killed five months later by the crew of the Rebecca Simms, [10] and yielded 70–80 barrels of oil. [11]
While an accidental collision with a sperm whale at night accounted for sinking of the Union in 1807, [12] the Essex incident some 30 years beforehand was the only other documented case of a whale deliberately attacking, holing, and sinking a ship. However, these two incidents are probably not as much of a freak occurrence as they appear to be.
Observations of aggression in male cetaceans, and more generally in male artiodactyls, suggest that head-butting during male-male aggression is a basal behavior. Carrier, Deban, & Otterstrom (2002) suggest that the enlarged melon or spermaceti organ may have evolved into a battering ram, used to injure an opponent in such attacks. [13] The ability of the sperm whale to aggressively attack and destroy ships some 3–5 times its body mass in this manner is therefore hardly surprising. The 5 month period that elapsed between the sinking of the Ann Alexander and the killing of the whale involved, demonstrates that long-term survival was possible after combat with a much larger ship and so, presumably, with another whale as well. [13]
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg on the ship's previous voyage. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a Great American Novel was established only in the 20th century, after the 1919 centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner said he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.
Thomas Gibson Nickerson was an American sailor and author. In 1819, when he was fourteen years old, Nickerson served as cabin boy on the whaleship Essex. On this voyage, the ship was sunk by a whale, and the crew spent three months at sea before the survivors were rescued. In 1876 he wrote The Loss of the Ship "Essex", an account of the ordeal and of his subsequent experiences at sea. The manuscript was lost until 1960, and was first published in 1984.
This article discusses the history of whaling from prehistoric times up to the commencement of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986. Whaling has been an important subsistence and economic activity in multiple regions throughout human history. Commercial whaling dramatically reduced in importance during the 19th century due to the development of alternatives to whale oil for lighting, and the collapse in whale populations. Nevertheless, some nations continue to hunt whales even today.
Essex was an American whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. On 20 November 1820, while at sea in the southern Pacific Ocean under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., the ship was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale. Thousands of miles from the coast of South America with little food and water, the 20-man crew was forced to make for land in the ship's surviving whaleboats.
Mocha Dick was a male sperm whale that lived in the Pacific Ocean in the early 19th century, usually encountered in the waters near Mocha Island, off the central coast of Chile. American explorer and author Jeremiah N. Reynolds published his account, "Mocha Dick: Or The White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a Manuscript Journal" in 1839 in The Knickerbocker. Mocha Dick was an albino and partially inspired Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick.
Pequod is a fictional 19th-century Nantucket whaling ship that appears in the 1851 novel Moby-Dick by American author Herman Melville. Pequod and her crew, commanded by Captain Ahab, are central to the story, which, after the initial chapters, takes place almost entirely aboard the ship during a three-year whaling expedition in the Atlantic, Indian and South Pacific oceans. Most of the characters in the novel are part of Pequod's crew.
Owen Chase was first mate of the whaler Essex, which sank in the Pacific Ocean on November 20, 1820, after being rammed by a sperm whale. Soon after his return to Nantucket, Chase wrote an account of the shipwreck and the attempts of the crew to reach land in small boats. The book, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex, was published in 1821 and would inspire Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick.
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a book by American writer Nathaniel Philbrick about the loss of the whaler Essex in the Pacific Ocean in 1820. The book was published by Viking Press on May 8, 2000, and won the 2000 National Book Award for Nonfiction. It was adapted into a film of the same name, which came out in late 2015.
A whaler or whaling ship is a specialized vessel, designed or adapted for whaling: the catching or processing of whales.
The Nantucket was a 350-ton whaler built in Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1837. First master, David N. Edwards, 1837-40, then: George Washington Gardner, 1841–45; Benjamin C. Gardner, 1845–50; Richard C. Gibbs 1850-54 ; Richard C. Gibbs (1855–59).
Commercial whaling in the United States dates to the 17th century in New England. The industry peaked in 1846–1852, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, sent out its last whaler, the John R. Mantra, in 1927. The Whaling industry was engaged with the production of three different raw materials: whale oil, spermaceti oil, and whalebone. Whale oil was the result of "trying-out" whale blubber by heating in water. It was a primary lubricant for machinery, whose expansion through the Industrial Revolution depended upon before the development of petroleum-based lubricants in the second half of the 19th century. Once the prized blubber and spermaceti had been extracted from the whale, the remaining majority of the carcass was discarded.
Sperm whaling is the human practice of hunting sperm whales, the largest toothed whale and the deepest-diving marine mammal species, for the oil, meat and bone that can be extracted from the cetaceans' bodies.
Owen Coffin was a sailor aboard the Nantucket whaler Essex when it set sail for the Pacific Ocean on a sperm whale-hunting expedition in August 1819, under the command of his cousin, George Pollard, Jr. In November 1820, a whale rammed and breached the hull of Essex in mid-Pacific, causing Essex to sink. The crew escaped in small whaleboats, with sufficient supplies for two months, but were not rescued within that time. During January 1821, the near-starved survivors began to eat the bodies of those who had died. When even this resource ran out, the four men remaining in Pollard's boat agreed to draw straws to decide which of them should be killed, lest all four die of starvation. Coffin lost in the lottery, and was shot and eaten. The captain volunteered to take Coffin's place but Coffin refused, saying it was his 'right' to do so that the others might live.
Samuel Enderby & Sons was a whaling and sealing company based in London, England, founded circa 1775 by Samuel Enderby (1717–1797). The company was significant in the history of whaling in the United Kingdom, not least for encouraging their captains to combine exploration with their business activities, and sponsored several of the earliest expeditions to the subantarctic, Southern Ocean and Antarctica itself.
Two Brothers was a Nantucket whaleship that sank on the night of February 11, 1823, off the French Frigate Shoals. The ship's captain was George Pollard, Jr., former captain of the famous whaleship Essex. The wreck was discovered in 2008 by a team of marine archaeologists working on an expedition for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. She is thought to have been built in 1804 by Joseph Glidden in Hallowell, Maine.
In the Heart of the Sea is a 2015 historical adventure-drama film directed and produced by Ron Howard and written by Charles Leavitt. It is based on Nathaniel Philbrick's 2000 non-fiction In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, about the sinking of the American whaling ship Essex in 1820, an event that in part inspired Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. An international co-production between the United States and Spain, the film stars Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Whishaw, and Brendan Gleeson.
Moby Dick is a fictional white sperm whale and the primary antagonist in Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. Melville based the whale on an albino whale of that period, Mocha Dick.
George Pollard Jr. (1791–1870) was the captain of the whalers Essex and Two Brothers, both of which sank. Pollard's life, including his encounter with the sperm whale that sank Essex, served as inspiration for Captain Ahab, the whale-obsessed character in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.
Amos Peters Smalley (1877–1961) was a Native American whaler, fisherman, and fish peddler.
from its Earliest Inception to the Year 1876
to which is added an account of two like occurrences: The loss of ships Ann Alexander and Essex
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