Chase, Owen:

$32,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

NARRATIVE OF THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY AND DISTRESSING SHIPWRECK OF THE WHALE-SHIP ESSEX, OF NANTUCKET; WHICH WAS ATTACKED AND FINALLY DESTROYED BY A LARGE SPERMACETI-WHALE, IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN; WITH ... A classic Pacific whaling rarity: the extremely rare first authentic account of the famous Essex shipwreck, whose sinking by a whale was, apart from being a sensational story in its own right, a landmark in American literature as the inspiration for the climax of Melville's MOBY DICK.Chase, first mate of the Essex and a native of Nantucket, provides a firsthand description of the ramming and sinking of the ship by a furious sperm whale on November 20, 1819, some two thousand miles west of the Galapagos. The surviving twenty crew members struggled to exist in three open boats, but only eight lived through the ordeal. Crew members on all three boats resorted to cannibalism eating those who died of natural causes, and killing one member when the need arose. All six of the Black crew members died or were reported missing. The voyage of the two remaining boats that were rescued off the coast of South America was twice as long as that of Bligh in the launch of the Bounty.This has always been a scarce book. In 1935 the Golden Cockerel press published an attractive limited edition of the text with wood-engravings by Robert Gibbings.As with many (even most) American books of the period, there is some tanning and foxing in this copy as a result of the poor paper used in the publication.

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