Owen Chase

Owen Chase ( * 1796, † June 11, 1869 ) was a Nantucket originating, American sailor and Chief Petty Officer of the New England whaling ship Essex, of 20 November 1820 the position 0 ° 41 ' S, 118 ° 0' W - 0.68333333333333 -118 attacked in the Pacific from a very large Sperm Whale, capsized and was eventually brought to sink.

After the sinking of the Essex

Owen Chase and the rest of the team initially managed to escape in three boats with water and provisions, and tried to reach the South American coast. The rescue succeeded from the original twenty crew members, only five men already near death after a grueling three-month journey in the frail open boats. Three meantime on the desert island Henderson remaining crew members could also be saved. One of the three boats remained missing.

This story described Owen Chase in his book 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 Pazific Ocean; with an Account of the Unparalleled Sufferings of the Captain and crew falling on a Space of Ninety- Three Days at Sea, in open boats; in the Years 1819 & 1820. New York, 1821.

It already appeared in September of the year of his salvation, so about a year after the Essex was rammed by the Whale. For the devout Quaker Nantucket his portrayals of cannibalism aboard the boats were a hard -to-digest diet Chase got in the following 11 years, no place on an expiring from Nantucket whalers.

Connection to Melville

Twenty years later, Herman Melville Chase received book from an accidental meeting with Stephan ( according to reports, was the first name of the young man William), the sixteen year old son O. Chase, from whose hands. He told the young Herman Melville his father's story. The presentation of the sperm whale attack related Melville among other real events in his 1851 published book Moby Dick.

Expenditure

• Owen Chase: The wreck of the whaleship Essex: a narrative account. Harcourt Brace & Co., San Diego, 1999, ISBN 0-15-600689-8.
• Owen Chase: The sinking of the Essex. The Hansa Verlag, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-434-52565-3.
• Owen Chase: The sinking of the Essex. Piper, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-492-23514- X.
• Owen Chase: Narrative of .... (reprint ). New York 1999, ISBN 0-15-600689-8.