How the survivors of the ship disaster fared
N 69°19'28.8" E 16°07'05.7"
Date:
03.10.2020
Day: 062
Country:
Norway
Location:
Andenes
Daily kilometers:
0 km
Total kilometers:
5444 km
Soil condition:
Asphalt
Sunrise:
07:11
Sunset:
18:31
Temperature day max:
14°
Night temperature min:
9°
Departure:
10:30
Arrival time:
18:00
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“How did Captain Pollard fare after the disaster?” asks Tanja. “He returned to Nantucket. When his aunt found out that her son had been eaten by him and Charles Ramsdell, she was naturally horrified. I don’t know how a mother is supposed to get over something like that. Maybe she never got over it. I don’t know. In any case, Pollard got another chance and took command of the whaler Two Brothers, on which the ship’s boy Thomas Nickerson also signed on again.” “Who was Nickerson again?” I ask, because I’m confused by all the names. “Nickerson was the cabin boy who survived the Essex disaster in one of the small whaleboats.” “Ah yes, I remember. And the boy signed on again on a whaler after such a terrible odyssey?” “There weren’t many job offers to survive back then. That was certainly one reason,” explains Fynn. “And what happened next?” asks Tanja. “Well, Georg Pollard was kind of unlucky. On February 11, 1823, the Two Brothers ran aground on a coral reef near French Frigate Shoals, an atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiʻi Islands. The whaler sank, which was incidentally rediscovered by underwater archaeologists in 2008. However, this time the castaways were rescued the day after the accident. It was Pollard’s last command. He spent the rest of his life as a night watchman on Nantucket. He was later interviewed by the journalist Hermann Melville, who wrote the world-famous sea novel Moby Dick. Melville himself served on a whaling ship for several years. He was inspired by the tragedy of the Essex and Captain Polland and mixed his own experiences into the Mobydick story. For him, Polland was the most impressive and humble man he had ever met.
Incidentally, the first officer of the Essex, Owen Chase, wrote a book about his experiences immediately after his return at the end of 1821. But I don’t think this work reached many people.”
“And what happened to the cabin boy?” I ask. “Thomas Nickerson?” “Yes.” “After the second shipwreck, he was probably fed up and opened a small hotel on Nantucket. 56 years after the Essex sank, he wrote down his memories of the odyssey. However, his notes were never noticed until they were published in 1984 with the title: “The loss of the whale-sunk ship Essex and the ordeal of the crew in open boats”, Fynn concludes his long, gruesome and exciting story. We sit there for a few minutes in a daze, not expecting anything like this. “Thank you for your story,” I say cautiously. “It was a pleasure to tell you the stories of my grandfathers. At my age, I’m not always such a good listener as you are. But now I have to get going. I want to go to Kirkenes with my son.” “Do you live up there in the north?” “Yes. It’s beautiful there.” “We know Kirkenes. We were on the Norwegian-Russian border last year,” I say and say goodbye to Flynn…
