Dark Waters

designed for speed and style. While Collins didn't have the capital necessary to build them himself, had managed to convince the wealthy investment bank and trading firm Brown Brothers and Company to finance him. Collins also secured a government contract to carry mail and passengers between New York and Britain. The combination of luxury, speed and business quickly earned the line the reputation of being the grandest transatlantic ships of

their day. On September thirteenth of eighteen fifty four, the Arctic docked in Liverpool, as it had done several times before, and the crew began preparations for the ship's return voyage. Several prominent passengers were about to embark, including relatives of both the Collins and Brown families. Also joining the passengers was Captain James Luce's sickly son Willie. The passengers and

crew enjoyed a pleasant journey until September. On the ship encountered dick fog along the Grand Banks, just off the Canadian coast. Captain Loose ordered lookouts to watch for other ships. The fog was so thick that the watchman didn't see the French steamer, the Vesta, until it was too late. Although the crew sent up an alarm, neither ship had

time to avoid the collision. The Vesta's steel halls sliced into the Arctics would framework, and Captain Loose believed his ship could limp to the nearest port and the Arctic invest up. Each continued on their path. Not long afterward, the luxury steamer began taking on water and the crew panicked. Although there were laws forbidding crew from abandoning their passengers, not one of the Arctics crewmen cried out women and children first. It's aligned captains and crews of board sinking

ships have shouted countless times. On the Titanic. The band played while women and children were loaded into the available lifeboats. The things were different on the Arctic, and the ship had six lifeboats capable of holding a hundred and eighty people, but the crew had other ideas. They ignored the captain's shouts to properly load the lifeboats. In the chaos, the

crew pushed through the line of waiting passengers. The men shoved away the women and children trying to get into the lifeboats, even though they knew the passengers would die in the frigid water. The crew abandoned everyone on board and refused to help save the ship. When all the crew had climbed into the lifeboats, they launched away half filled, leaving behind the passengers to fend for themselves, and people desperately tried to string along rafts that might at least

keep the children afloat. Among the three hundred and fifty people who drowned were Edward Colin's wife and two children, and several members of the Brown family, including the president of the bank. Captain Loose managed to cling to a piece of the ship until rescued. He arrived in New York with a hero's welcome. Understandably, the rest of the crew received a much less favorable greeting. Outrage over the treatment of the passengers reached a fever pitch, prompting most

of the crew to flee the state. Not one member of the crew was charged in any court of law, nor held accountable for their actions. Sometimes the horrors are too great, and we look the other way. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. Welcome to American Shadows. In the early eighteen hundreds, while the rest of the world's economy sank into a downturn, the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts was fast becoming one of the richest communities in America. Over seventy ships called its

harbor's home. They came and went through the seasons, bringing back sizeable catches enough to keep the town residents living in high style. Life hadn't always been easy or prosperous, though. In the sixteen hundreds, most of the colonists farmed or raised livestock. When more people arrived and land became scarce, the community turned to something less land consuming and more profitable.

Whaling had first come upon the idea after finding two beached sperm whales, which you or I might find tragic or a little gross, but at the time was a bit like stumbling across gold. Once they killed the creatures, they drained them of what's known as Sperma ceti, waxy odorless oil found in a large sack in the animal's head that had become very valuable due to its use

in lanterns, cosmetics, and as a mechanical lubricant. Cape cod native Ichabod Paddock was happy to teach nantucketers everything he knew about whaling and to make it safer and more profitable for the colonists. The method included enslaving the native Wampanog people to dispatch the whales and tow them back to shore. From then on, captains and their crews slaughtered the whales that gathered at the cape every fall, and

by the seventeen hundreds, the whales numbers dwindled. Undeterred, the men used bigger vessels and ventured further out to sea. Whales are smart, are the ones that survived taught younger generations to avoid the vessels. They even changed their migratory patterns. It wasn't enough. The whalers hunted ruthlessly, endangering a few species survival. With whales becoming scarce nantucketers built even bigger vessels,

manned by even larger crews to scour the seas. They traveled from the Arctic to the west coast of Africa, and from South America to the Falkland Islands in search of their prey. During the peak of whale season fifteen to twenty, large ships, men, dozens of sluts and schooners dotted Nantucket's harbor. Labyrinths of anchors, tripods, spars, and oil casks filled the wharves. Sailors and artisans crowded the streets, and horse drawn carts came and went constantly. Nantucket native

Thomas Nickerson found the sites and sounds comforting. As a child, he had played on the docks and waterfront, clambering onto aging whale ships, shimmying along the ratlines, and climbing the rigging. Now, with his childhood behind him, he was ready to go to sea. Nickerson wasn't the youngest. Some of the boys were just nine or ten years old when they first hunted whales. He was the youngest of the current crew, though, at fourteen years of age, he had chosen to follow

in his father's footsteps and become a whaler instead. Of working in shops or businesses on the mainland. Leaving home was hard, but he wouldn't be alone. Nickerson would be joined by lifelong friends Barzillai, Rae Owen Coffin, and Charles Ramsdell, all aged between fifteen and eighteen, and like his friends and their families, Nickerson believed in Quakerism, which preached pacifism.

While that may seem at odds with whaling when sea creatures aren't human, and the children were raised to believe the hunt was a noble and grand way of life. Their parents read them bedtime stories about killing whales and the cannibals the brave soldiers evaded on remote tropical islands, the pervasive myth among European colonists about native peoples in the America's one mother proudly boasted that her nine year old son used a fork to harpoon the family cat.

Like the whaling men, he shouted to the fleeing cat, Pay out, mother, pay out, there, she sounds through the window. Men wore pins on their lapels to signify how many whales theyd slaughtered. The higher the number, the more suitable a husband. They were considered. Their time at sea often months or years at once, was worn like a badge of courage. While the men were gone, the women kept the town going. They raised the children, and kept the

house inside and out. When the chores were done, they oversaw the island's business and kept the social calendar going. With the men at sea, Nantucket became a matriarchal society, but whaling had its costs. In eighteen ten, there were four hundred and seventy two fatherless children on the island. One quarter of the women could expect to lose a husband to the sea, but none of this deterred Thomas and the others. The boys gathered on the dock in

the late summer of eighteen nineteen. The sea and the whales were waiting. They had been raised their whole lives for this moment. They were ready to board the Essex for what the locals called and Nantucket's sleigh ride. But

sadly they would get so much more than that. The Essex, coming in at eight seven feet and weighing two hundred and thirty eight tons, wasn't particularly large for a whaling ship, and though she had brought in a steady profit, the twenty year old ship had been mostly neglected for the past fifteen years. A rock and naval shipworms had taken their toll on the wood, but she also suffered from what sailors called iron sickness, the decay and corrosion of

the iron on board. Though passed her prime, the Essex had made her owners and many captains rich. The owners figured that the ship had one, maybe two more hunting trips in her before send in her to the scrap yard. Still, they made a few modest repairs before the journey. Locals noted that a comet appeared in the sky as the repairs began in July nineteen, and that a swarm of

grasshoppers had invaded the turnip fields. The people of Nantucket were a suspicious bench, if not slightly superstitious, and so when the Essex set out to sea in August, the community began to talk. Nothing good could come from these bad omens, certainly meant for the ship and crew. Unaware of the gossip, new Captain George Pollard felt confident he had spent the past four years on the Essex as

the first mate, and no one knew her better. Another long timer, Owen Chase, had been promoted to first mate. At night, Nickerson and the others settled down on mattresses stuffed with mildewed corn husks. The night and the breeze were a welcome relief from the daytimes punishing heat. For two days the seas were relatively smooth. A squall hit them on August fourteenth, Young Coffin assured Nickerson that all

would be well. Captain Pollard was also his cousin, and if anyone could navigate the Essex through a storm, it was him. When the worst of the storm had passed, two of the four whaling boats that hung off the port side had been swept away. The spare boat on the stern had been crushed, leaving the crew with just two functioning boats. Several sails, including the top gallant, were torn,

rendering them almost useless. Pollard wanted to turn back, but Chase disagreed, insisting that the ship was fine and they could find spare whale boats once they reached Portugal. After some debate between the men, Pollard relented and they continued. At first, the captain and first mate took to lying to the crew, telling them the winds prevented them from turning around. Only later did they tell them the truth.

When the crew sailed into the Azores and Archipelago off Portugal to resupply, they discovered that spare boats were hard to come by. After finding just one, the crew got back to business hunting whales. A lookout spotted a pot of whales somewhere between Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. Pollard ordered several men set out on two of the remaining boats. The men complied, racing to reach the pod first for bragging rights. Nickerson was on first, mate Chase's boat,

and they reached the whales first. A novice harpooner fumbled and didn't quite manage to secure one of the whales. As Chase barked more orders, a whale came up from under them. The whale rammed the boat, splintering it to bits and tossing the men into the sea. Nickerson treaded water among the swimming whales, terrified that attack. Instead, the whales swam off. Paullard swung his boat around and rescued the men. It would be days before they spotted the

pot again. This time the harpoon found its mark. The men cheered and called out as they embarked on their first Nantucket sleigh ride. The goal was to tire out the harpooned whale, allowing them to get close enough to stab it, and then slashed the tendons and tail before running a lance into its lungs of brutal death. Nightfall approached by the time. The men towed the whale back to the Essex, butchered it and drained the oil. Then they celebrated. In November, the crew spotted a large mail

sperm whale heading straight toward the Essex. It rammed them, the impact, tossing the men off their feet and tearing a hole into the ship. As the crew tried to stop the water from pouring in, the whale ran the ship once more. While the Essex took on water and terrified, men loaded themselves in their supplies into the remaining boats. They were miles from land, and somewhere beneath them was a very large and very angry whale. There lifeboats leaked

in a matter of days. The saltwater dampened the biscuits and endangered the rest of the food as well. Captain Pollard wanted to head to the nearest landfall islands near Tahiti. About thirty days away. First mate, Chase, disagreed. He argued that everyone knew the island had cannibals who would surely eat them. Instead, he insisted they head to South America. The captain relented control to his first mate once more.

Pollard and Chase each had navigational equipment in their boats, and crewmin Matthew Joy followed in the third Nickerson began to realize their odds of survival. After they've been rowing for nearly a month, everyone was dehydrated and starving by the time they reached Henderson, a small inlet with nothing on it except sea birds, shellfish, and brackish water. A few days later, they had eaten most of the sea birds.

Pollard and Chase ordered everyone back into the boats, three of them and refused, opting to take a chance a passing ship would spot them with limited food. The others agreed. They took some of the birds and fish they had caught and set off again towards South America. As the days dragged on, the hot sun and lack of water took their toll, men began to die. To lighten the boats,

their bodies were tossed overboard. For a month, the men drifted and rowed, still hopeful they'd make it to Easter Island. They knew nothing of the inhabitants. If it had cannibals, no one had heard about it, and at this point they didn't care. On January third, eighty squalls pushed the boats further away from the island. The men had finished the last of their food. They had one saving grace. The storm had supplied them with water enough that each

man could have one cup per day. On January four, Matthew Joy died and the men buried him at sea. Chase ordered a man named Hendricks to take over Joy's boat. Days later, a dense fog rolled in, and by morning Chase had lost track of the other boats. After a search, he decided to continue their course and hope for the best. One night, Chase forgot to lock the supply chest and one of the men stole extra food. He threatened to

kill the man if he stole another bite. The next night, the exhausted men awakened to something huge hitting the boat. They watched as a shark circled. Normally, such an encounter would have sparked fear, especially given what the whale had done, but the men were hungry, very hungry. Chase grabbed the harpoon. If you could kill the shark that have food. He tried a few times as the shark continued to circle,

but was too weak to penetrate the animal's skin. After several more jabs, in one last lap, the shark swam off yeah. The next day, another man on his boat died. Chase had run out of hope and options. Far away, Pollard and his men suffered the same fate. Without supplies, he and his men could do nothing to save themselves, well almost nothing, you see, even miles apart, The two men came to the same conclusion, stop throwing the bodies overboard, and for the first time and far too long, the

survivors eight. Then they waited for land and for the next crewmate to die. On February six, Pollard's men were on the brink. Their supplies were gone and no one had died in three weeks. They decided to draw Straws, whoever lost, would sacrifice themselves to feed the others. To Pollard's horror, his cousin Owen Coffin lost another draw. Straws decided the Coffin's best friend would be the one to pull the trigger. With the deed done, the men didn't

waste a single moment. Seventeen days later, Pollard and Ramsdell cleaned the marrow from the bones of their last murdered crewman. When an American ship, the Dauphin, came across them. Three hundred miles away, Chase Nickerson and another crew member managed to catch the attention of an English ship. The men who stayed behind on the small inlet survived on birds, eggs, and shellfish for another month before an Australian ship rescued them.

The third boat was later found with just three skeletons on board. The eight survivors were reunited in Valparaiso. After they recovered, they boarded a ship again headed home to Nantucket, but they would never be the same. During the trip home, Pollard joined the captain for dinner. Throughout the meal, he recounted his harrowing ordeal. The captain returned to his room and wrote everything down, noting it had been the most distressing story had ever heard. The crew arrived home without

fanfare or mention. No one wanted to talk about what the men had had to do to survive. No one, that is, except Pollard's family. They rejected him for having eaten his cousin. Coffin's mother refused to be in the same room with him. He briefly served as the captain of another whaling ship the two brothers, but after it sank in Ee, no shipping company would hire him and no crew would work with him. Meanwhile, Chase wrote and published a book about those dark months at sea. He

included every gory horrifying detail. For a while, the books sales helped support his family. Years later, Chase's son, William, followed in his footsteps and became a whaler too. While the story had become legend, existing copies of the book were rare. On one of his trips, William Chase met another whaler of the same age who wasn't from Nantucket. Though the story had traveled far and wide, his new

friend wanted to hear all the details. The more the young crewmen learned, the more intrigued and fascinated he became. When the two worked together on a whaling ship headed to the Pacific, he was delighted that Chase gave him a copy of his father's book. The curious crewmen eagerly read it covered a cover. The story stayed with him for some time before he wrote and published a work of fiction based on these true events. It took him

eighteen months to write. When the novel they viewed, the young whaler turned author visited Nantucket for the first time. The island was in its heyday, it had become the whaling capital of the world. Before he left, he got the chance to meet with Captain Pollard. It was just once, but the novelist remembered the captain as one of the most humble and unassuming men he had ever met. To Hermann Melville, Pollard was nothing like his character Captain Ahab.

Moby Dick wasn't an instant success. By the time Melville died, the book was out of print. It took a hundred years before William Faulkner commented that he wished he had written it himself. After a slow beginning, that opening line of call me Ishmael quickly became one of the most memorable phrases in literature, and with it, Moby Dick became one of the most famous stories of the sea ever told. There's more to this story. Stick around after this brief

sponsor break to hear all about it. The archaeologists met the fourteen year old girl in twelve they've been working on the Jamestown Rediscovery project at Preservation, Virginia when they came across her. Skeleton. Jane, as they called her, was found in a cellar along with the remains of butchered animals, all bearing marks on their bones from human teeth. Young Jane had been eaten, as history has it, The colony

had started as a promising endeavor. In sixteen o six, the Virginia Company, which hoped to find gold and silver, sponsored its creation. England hoped the riches they'd find would help them become the world power, taking the title from Spain. Three ships left England in December of sixteen o six, the season Constant, the Discovery, and the god Speed aboard where a hundred and four colonists, including former Mercenary Captain

John Smith. It took the ships four months to make the journey, stopping at three ports before arriving in America on April sixteen o seven. They named the area Cape Henry, and the expedition crew immediately set out to find a more suitable place to establish a colony. They explored an area around what's now called Chesapeake Bay and came upon a river they named the James River in honor of

King James the First. In mid May of sixteen o seven, they selected a peninsula in the middle of the James River. The strip of land forty miles inland from the Atlantic, was a solid choice for a fortress. The curve in the river made the area easily defensible, and the channel provided easy access to supply and trading ships. They also chose the land due to the lack of indigenous peoples there. Native Americans considered the land a poor choice for either

agriculture or comfort. It was marshy, egg by mosquitoes, and the brackish water wasn't suitable for drinking. The colonists had arrived during a drought. They didn't understand the marsh of a problem, and they didn't find the site's isolation in small size as problematic as the Native Americans had. However, they did learn that mosquitoes were abundant and drinking water scarce. The plus growing crops in a drought proved more difficult

than they anticipated. That arrived too late in the year for a successful harvest, and were unaware of the amount of labor it took to establish a fort. During the first nine months, all but thirty eight colonists died from either starvation or disease. The Powhatan people brought food to the colonists of Jamestown and often traded with the colony for items brought in on supply ships, but the relationship began to sour when the terms of the trade changed

and the colonists became increasingly hostile. Powetans stopped trading and sending food. Without their help, and without the proper land to grow crops and raise livestock, starvation set in once more. The colonists called sixteen o nine to sixteen ten the starvation time. The Virginia Company sent another nine ships with food and additional supplies, but a hurricane struck the fleet and they never arrived. The company sent more ships. These

carried three hundred new colonists, but very few supplies. Captain Smith returned to England after an injury, leaving George Percy in charge. This new council president was left with a problem. Either the colonists venture away from the fort and onto Powetan territory to gather food or starve Percy chose to ration supplies. Some of the colonists chose to hunt on Powhatan land and were killed or taken hostage. Greatly outnumbered, the colonists turned to every animal within the fort is food.

When not even a mount was left, they ate shoe leather. It didn't take much longer for them to turn to cannibalism. When Percy's letters were found, anthropologists learned that they began with the recently deceased, then moved on to digging up graves and eventually murder. In the case of Jane, the analysis indicated her flesh had been stripped from her bones. Her skull had even been cracked open to access her brain.

When the ship The Sea Venture arrived at the fort in May of sixteen, crewmen were met with a horrifying sight. The captain realized that the supplies who had brought wouldn't be enough to sustain the colony, and made the decision to return to England with the survivors. Governor Lord Delaware blocked their entry and ordered them to return to Jamestown and rebuild, this time with the help of the Algonquin peoples. The colonists learned how to survive in the New Land

and produced decent enough crops to sustain themselves in sixteen eleven. Eventually, the comists abandoned the settlement, choosing instead to relocate to Williamsburg, where, of course, they thrived, putting their dark past behind them. American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was written by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed, and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,

Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show, visit grim and Mild dot com. From more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.