Sea Snack: Cannibalism on a Boat!

make our own? Well? I need to cannibalize my fellow producers to make exciting content for the hordes of true crime fans in order to get on the Apple Podcast charts. It's a competitive market. You gotta hustle, you gotta grind those bones like my colleagu's bones. Guys, I'm just kidding. Don't cancel me, not this early in the season. But I'm only mentioning this because there are some professions throughout history where you might find yourself in a situation where

you have to eat a colleague or two. It might happen. Specifically, one profession where this happened was whaling. And I don't mean whaling like a banshee after drinking a bottle of wine because a guy named Kevin ghosted you. I mean being a person who goes out into the ocean and hunts and kills whales, beautiful innocent whales with a harpoon. That's whale for Please, No, not my brother Jonathan.

like being a whaler. I think it's probably pretty stressful job, like a lot more stressful than making a widtle podcast, because not only do you have to catch a big old whale, you also have to be on a boat with twenty of the same people for months and months and months, and the wi fi is terrible, especially because it is the early nineteenth century, and the thing about eating your crewmates not only was this a thing that happened from time to time, it was also socially acceptable

because when you're on a boat far out from land, anything can happen. You might get lost in the middle of the ocean, you might run out of food, you might get attacked by a big ass whale who's tired of whalers, and your only hope it's arrival. Is eating your fellow sailor eating some seamen if you will so, Yes, we have finally reached an episode about hannibalism. Cannibalism that was deemed necessary because a whale fucked up about they music.

This is American filth, and I'm your host, Gabby Watts. Every week I tell you a filthy story from American history. Today's episode see snack. No no, no, no no no. Probably some of you smarty pants had already guessed this, but this episode is about the ship the Essex. You might know that accounts from its last voyage provided some spicy inspiration for Herman Melville's Moby Dick. But I went to a public high school. Guys, I didn't read Moby Dick.

Call me Ishmael. Why my name is Gabby? Anyway, let's get into the content before I spiral. The Essex was built in Amesbury, Massachusetts. It was a three masted ship built from white oak. The wood was known for its strength, which is ironic in this case because it's gonna be thugged up. Originally, merchants used this ship for trade, but then it was turned into a whaling vessel. But whaling was dangerous. While the ship itself was large, it had

to be outfitted with smaller boats. Once a crew spotted a whale, they would hop into the smaller boats and chase the mammel down. Ropes connected the harpoons to the boat. Than when the men had tied the whale down, they would kill it with the lance before towing it back to the main ship. Blubber and oil, Baby, it makes the world go round. The Essex was at first known

as a lucky vessel. By the time of the adventure I'm talking about today, the ship was about twenty years old and it had made many successful and profitable voyages. The eighty seven foot long vessel was set to sail on August twelfth, eighteen nineteen. It carried twenty one men, including first time captain George Pollard Junior. Also heading on what was supposed to be a two and a half to three year voyage was first mate Owen Chase, second

mate Matthew Joy, and Pollard's cousin Owen Coffin. Coffin was about ten years younger than Pollard, and Pollard had promised Coffin's mom that he would keep him safe. Ah foreshadowing. The plan was to leave Nantucket and head to the South Pacific Ocean, but the sea had other plans for these guys. Off the bat, they were hit with some bad luck. Literally two days into the trip, a storm knocked the Essex on its side and the ship got damaged. One of the sails was broken, and two whale boats

were missing. Pollard was like, Yo, we should head back. I'm not feeling too good about this trip. His first mate, Chase, was like, nah, we're good. I think we should keep going. Pollard was like, fine, we'll keep going. The ship was able to sail to Cape Horn in a few weeks, but the waters around the tip of South America were pretty fished out, so off they went again. No whales

for the Essex. Finally, two months later, the ship spotted their first whale south of Rio de Janeiro and YadA, YadA, YadA. More traveling was done until they entered the South Pacific, and January eighteen twenty the Essex reached the waters of Peru. It was only then that they finally started catching the big game. The crew caught and killed ten whales. Then in late May, Pollard decided to head into deeper waters

because that had proven lucrative for other whalers. They stopped at a little town in Ecuador in September eighteen t need to prepare. At that point, one of the dudes ditched the crew while they were there, so they ended up being one man short. But whatever, it's just one guy, what could go wrong. The Essex then headed to Hood Island in the Galapagos, where they prepare a leak and restocked, and I guess because they were bored or whatever, they

caught two hundred tortoises rip tortoises. In October eighteen twenty, the men arrived at Charles Island. There they collected even more tortoises, because two hundred sometimes that's just not enough tortoises. And then one of the crew members, as a practical joke, set a small fire on the island, and then turns out that that small fire would wipe through the entire island. It even caused the dudes themselves to turn tail and run. Even years later, it remained a charred version of what

it once was. But you guys know, boys will be boys, and boys will ruin an entire ecosystem. But back to the store, The ship then left the safety of the Galopagos Islands, and this is where the thing started going wayside. It's November eighteen twenty and the crew spotted a whale on the horizon. Some of the crew members jumped into the whaling boats to go catch the whale. But twenty three year old Chase, remember the first mate, stayed aboard the Essex, and while he was just milling about, he

spotted some craziness in the distance. He was peering off over the ship, like what the heck is that, and then he suddenly realized that it was an enormous sperm whale making a bee line for the ship. Now, a big ass whale coming to attack your boat out in the middle of nowhere. That's a big, oh shit moment. Chase estimated that the whale swam towards them about three knots before smashing into the ship head on with quote such an appalling and tremendous jar as nearly threw us

all on our faces. And now, sperm whales are normally big, scaredy cats, but for some reason, this whale was not. And some people think the reason that the whale attacked is because the hammering that they were doing on the ship sounded very similar to the clicks that other mail whales make, and so this whale might have been like, oh, no, there's another guy in my territory. I gotta go beat the shit out of him. Whatever it was, the whale wasn't having it. The whale hit the ship a second time,

taking no mercy. The crew that was still on board dropped the additional whaling boats and tried to fill them up with navigational tools and bread and water. By the time that Pollard and the other whaling boats got back to the Essex, it was nothing but a shipwreck. And now he and his crew are stranded almost two thousand miles out to see and there are not enough rations for them to survive. After the break, the real filth comes in BRB, and we're back just in time for

things to turn from bad to worse. Also, I feel like it's only fair to warn you up front this is where things start getting really gritty, like really gritty, so you know, if you need to probably like don't eat during this part. It's kind of gross unless you're a freak like me. Huh. So anyway, the Essex is destroyed. There are three whaling boats left filled with twenty men, and each of these boats were only twenty feet long. All the dudes are freaked. Pollard is scared as heck.

At this point they got to make some decisions. Pollard wanted to head for what he believed was the closest land, the Marquesas and Society Islands, but the rest of the crew was like, uh, can live there. I don't want to go there, which, lol is going to be very ironic. They were like, if we want to survive, we should head south with hope that the winds will like move our little boats along, or maybe another whaling ship will

see us. And the thing is, those islands that the crew was so afraid of going to supposedly had traders traveling to them without any issue. All ten fingers and toes intact, promised no missing legs. So instead of going there to land, they started heading south, and to no surprise, it fucking sucked. The salt water, ruined the bread. They had nothing to drink. They were stuck in the sun. I mean, you think falling asleep of the beach with no sunscreenings the bad. They were just out in the

sun on a boat. Crispy and then if that wasn't bad enough, Pollard ship got attacked again. People aren't one hundred percent sure, but it's assumed that it was a killer whale this time. If so, that leaves the score whales to human zero. I can hear the thunderous applause from the depths of the ocean. Yes. They eventually belly flopped onto land two weeks later at Henderson Island. Other than some fresh water, there was like no food. They

were there for a week. Three men chos stay behind to test their luck on the island, but the rest of them decided to hit the high seas again, which is going to be a massive mistake. It's mid December and the remaining crew have been at sea for weeks, and then when it gets to January, the lack of rations takes its toll. The first person to die, ironically, is one of the men who voted against sailing to the closest islands for the fear of cannibals. It's January tenth,

eighteen twenty eight. Second mate Matthew Joy meets his untimely demise. He's given a true sailor's burial and his body is tossed to the sea. Obet Hendrix takes command of the small whaling boat. The next day, a storm separated first mate Chase's boat from Hendrickson Pollard. Chase's boat started out having the worst luck. On January twentieth, the first of Chase's small crew dies. It was a normal death, nothing weird to see there, just a normal starvation, dehydration, exhaustion death.

But then three weeks later, Isaac Cole dies and he did not go easy into that dark knight. No, no, no, he went batshit crazy at that point, though, who could blame the guy. None of these men had had a substantial meal or water for weeks and had been staring at the same endless blue for months. But back to Cole and whatever was still functioning in that head of his he stands up, asks for a dinner napkin, and

then falls into convulsion. By the next morning, he's as dead as a doornail wire doornails dead, I don't know. At this point, Chase asked the rest of his crew. He was like, so, do you guys want to eat this body or what? And not a single person objected. He actually wrote about this in his book Shipwreck of the Whale ship Essex, and in that book he described

the cannibalism. He said, the men quote separated limbs from his body and cut all the flesh from the bones, after which we opened the body, took out the heart, and then closed it again, sewed it up as decently as we could, and committed it to the sea. Then, just to be civilized, they used a flat stone upon which they roasted the man's organs. Talk about a spread. It was time to feast. Chase also wrote about how

they cut the dead man into thin strips. Some of those strips were hung on the boat to dry in the sun so they could have food for later, just a little sailor jerky. After this cannibalism, this left three remaining men on Chase's boat. As for Hendrick's crew, his men fell like dominoes. From January twentieth to the twenty seventh. Three of Hendrick's men died and all three of them were eaten. Their names were Laws and Thomas, Charles Schorter

and Isaac Sheppard. And since Hendricks and Pollard's boats were so close together, the human hamburger helper was shared all around. And this is also when things are getting even more fucked up because loss in Charles and Isaac, all of them were black. And then on Pollard's boat, another black man died. His name was Samuel Reid. He died on

January twenty eighth. He was also eaten. And now historians aren't sure if this was all a coincidence, the fact that all the black crew members died, but I think we can speculate that based on the rest of the history of the United States of America, it maybe was not. As of beating your shipmates wasn't bad enough. Another storm came through the next day and sent Hendrick's boat one way and Pollard's the other. Now each whaling ship was

left to fend for itself. There were four men left on Pollard's boat, but the men decided if they didn't eat they would die. It's been nine weeks since the Essex took a nose dive into the sea with the help of the whale, and it was teenager Charles Ramsdale who suggested that they do the custom of the sea. Now, this was an old sea custom that dated back to

the first half of the seven venteenth century. It's the idea that if sailors found themselves stranded in remote waters with no food or water, the public would be sympathetic to cannibalism as a way to survive. Basically, if a shipwrecked sailor acknowledged that they had eaten human flesh to survive, everyone would be like, ah, that's fine. Sailors would draw straws to see who is going to be the next pig on a stick. But of course, like with most things,

that's not really how it went. It was the survival of the fittest, with the strong preying on the weak. If it was passengers versus sailors, passengers got eaten first. Boys were eaten before men, and of course if you were black, you were eating before your white counterparts. Also, everything else had to be consumed before resorting to eating each other, like everything shoes, candles, leather goods, blankets, What doesn't hit that spot like a good cotton blanket, yum yum.

The dead also had to be eaten first, you know, if they hadn't already been dropped as fish food. So with the drawing straw system, though, the person who would draw the shortest straw was the person who got eaten, and then whoever drew the second shortest straw would be the one who has to kill the guy with the shortest straw. All very straightforward. Those are the rules. So back to Pollard's small crew. There are four of them left, and Ramsdell says, yo, dudes, we need to draw the straws.

Everyone agrees, and then, in a wild twist of fate, Ohen Coffin, Pollard's younger cousin, draws the short straw in Ramsdell, who was Coffin's friend, draws the second shortest. Pollard is upset. Coffin is family, and remember he had promised Coffin's mother that he'd get the kid back in one piece, and now he's like, I gotta eat him. Fuck. Pollard offered to take Coffin's place. The Coffin refused. He was like, nah, man, I got the short straw. This is how it goes.

I just hope you get to eat all the juicy bits. Ramsey was also not happy about this. He didn't want to shoot his friend again. This was also weird because they had a fourth guy on the boat who evidently had no problem with any of this. I mean, they could have probably just ganged up on him and eaten him, but I don't know. They're like, we gotta believe in the straws. I guess it took a long time for Ramsdell to pull the trigger. In fact, Coffin kind of had to encourage him to do it, and so they

killed him and they ate him hmm, cousin Jerky. As for the other sailor who was with Pollard's small crew, he died and was eaten five days later. By this time, three hundred miles separated chasing Pollard's boat, and Pollard is faring way worse. Now there's only him and Ramsdell. Not a great thought. Then they're so hungry that they're trying to break up their crewmate's bone once it gets their narrow.

Now it's almost the end of February. They're floating out in the middle of the ocean, when suddenly an American ship comes into view. It's called the Dauphin. The crew on the boat spot him and Ramsdell, but they were so far gone at this point that they're like, no, we don't like this. We want to be left out

to sea, leave us alone. Who are these devils? When the crew members of the Dauphin picked them up, Pollard and Ramsdell stuffed their pockets with their dead crewmates bones, and it's said that the delirious men were seen sucking the bones of their dead messmates, which with they were loathed to part. So Pollard and Ramsdell have been saved. A week or earlier, after eighty nine days at sea, Chase's crew was spotted by the English ship the Indian,

and its three crew members were rescued. So as of now, from the twenty men that were on the Essex, five of them have survived the unforgiving seas. The two many crews were reunited in Valparaiso, Chili. Once they were there, the Australian ship Surrey was sent to see if the three guys who had stayed on that island were alive, and lo and bold, all three dudes had made it unlike their counterparts. They'd been cooking up shellfish and bird eggs.

On April ninth, eighteen twenty one, they were officially rescued. I'm sure the others were feeling some sort of way about that. Oh, you didn't have to eat your fellow crew mates. Okay, fine, but what about Hendrick's boat? The guy who took over after second mate Joy died well, no one really knows. A third boat was found years later on Deucyland with three skeletons. However, no one knows for sure if it was Hendricks Bolk. It's never been proven.

When the remaining crew made it back to Nantucket, pretty much everyone forgave them. Oh you had to eat our friends and family to survive, Cuca, cucka cool. No, I totally understand that. I support you. That's fine. Remember it's the custom of the sea. It's a get out of jail free card. But the one person who wasn't getting high fives for being back it was Pollard. Because Pollard they saw him in a different way because Pollard he ate his cousin and apparently that's too far. This was

viewed as gastronomic incests and it was totally inappropriate. I love rules. This is crazy anyway. I'm sure none of them really felt great about eating people. But after they got back Chase he actually became a writer. He wrote the narrative of the most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the whale ship Essex, and the thing is Chase. He actually went on to keep killing whales in the Pacific.

It was also a ladies man. He got married four times, and his second wife was actually the widow of Matthew Joy. Remember Joy was Chase's second mate on the Essex and the first dude to kick the can. Chase retired in eighteen forty before dying in eighteen sixty nine. And the thing is, before his death he went completely insane and began hoarding food in his attic. And here's what happened

to the other guys. Captain Thomas Nickerson, who survived. He kept working as a mate on whaling boats until he and his wife went back to Nantucket during the eighteen seventies. And like Chase, he also wrote about what happened, but he lost the notebook, but the account was actually found and then published in nineteen eighty four. Then there's Captain Charles Ramsdell, who also kept sailing on whaling ships. Then there's Captain Benjamin Lawis he continued whaling as well, along

with some other side hustles. The thing is, it's crazy that these guys kept whaling. I feel like after I ate someone, I'd probably not want to be at sever again. But Pollard he also was a captain again on another ship, this one called the two brothers and Niggerson and Ramsell.

They chose to once again bored under Pollard's command, but after being in the ocean for fifteen months, the two brothers hit a coral reef during a storm, and again the whole crew was stuck on small boats in the middle of the ocean, but luckily they were rescued the next day. After the wreck of the two brothers, Pollard's career tanked. He was considered bad luck and never went

whaling again. He did one more voyage in the merchant service, but then was like, man, I'm good and then he just stayed in Nantucket to work as a grocer for a few years and then a constable for thirteen years. People seem to like him despite his bad luck. He was married for more than fifty years and then died in eighteen seventy. However, the Essex, obviously that stayed with him. Pollard would spend every anniversary of the Essex wreck in

his room, fasting in honor of his dead crew. As always, we learn a lesson from American filth, and that lesson is did you guys get that? It says, give me back my brother Jonathan. American filled is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcast. This episode was hosted and sound designed by Me Gabby Watson, written by Miranda Hawkins. The theme song is by me and Jesse Niswanger. Our senior producer is Amelia Brock, and our executive producers are

Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. You can follow the show on Instagram at a Mayor and Filth pod and be sure to subscribe to a review wherever you listen to your podcast, and I hope you don't get so hungry that you have to eat people.