Non-fiction: In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrook
In the Heart of the Sea: the tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrook is a book that's been out for some time. I discovered it in my library shelves when recommending survival stories to a teacher. I remember ordering the book many years ago, but it's one (like so many others) that I never quite got around to reading. Until now, and I couldn't put it down.
This is the story of the Whaleship Essex from nearly the dawn of American History. Just a handful of decades after the American Revolution, the Whaleship Essex left Nantucket Island, just south of Boston, on what could be a two year or more voyage searching for whales and the precious oil their bodies contain. The voyage would become the stuff of legend, and nightmares, and a tale that would one day inspire Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. After rounding Cape Horn in south America and heading west from the Galapagos islands, a massive sperm whale attacked the Essex, sinking it while all but two crew members were out in smaller whaling boats hunting whales. The Essex sank within minutes, leaving the crew thousands of miles from land with nothing but three small boats and very few provisions.
Author Nathaniel Philbrook has accessed the few surviving first-hand accounts, as well as numerous other documents from the era, to tell a riveting story not only of what happened at sea but of life on the close-knit island of Nantucket. Philbrook also puts into perspective why whaling was so important in the era, and how quickly things changed in the decades following the Essex's demise.
The cover of the book says that this book won the National Book Award, and it was well-deserved. This is most definitely a non-fiction book that I'll add to my roster when doing book talks to high school students (at least those where I can mention non-fiction titles). Highly recommended.
This is the story of the Whaleship Essex from nearly the dawn of American History. Just a handful of decades after the American Revolution, the Whaleship Essex left Nantucket Island, just south of Boston, on what could be a two year or more voyage searching for whales and the precious oil their bodies contain. The voyage would become the stuff of legend, and nightmares, and a tale that would one day inspire Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. After rounding Cape Horn in south America and heading west from the Galapagos islands, a massive sperm whale attacked the Essex, sinking it while all but two crew members were out in smaller whaling boats hunting whales. The Essex sank within minutes, leaving the crew thousands of miles from land with nothing but three small boats and very few provisions.
Author Nathaniel Philbrook has accessed the few surviving first-hand accounts, as well as numerous other documents from the era, to tell a riveting story not only of what happened at sea but of life on the close-knit island of Nantucket. Philbrook also puts into perspective why whaling was so important in the era, and how quickly things changed in the decades following the Essex's demise.
The cover of the book says that this book won the National Book Award, and it was well-deserved. This is most definitely a non-fiction book that I'll add to my roster when doing book talks to high school students (at least those where I can mention non-fiction titles). Highly recommended.
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