Legacy
As noted above, word of the sinking reached a young Herman Melville when, while serving on the whaleship Acushnet, he met the son of Owen Chase who was serving on another whaleship. Coincidentally, the two ships encountered each other less than 100 mi (160 km) from where the Essex sank. Chase lent his father's account of the ordeal to Melville, who read it at sea and was inspired by the idea that a whale was capable of such violence. Melville later met Captain Pollard, writing inside his copy of Chase's narrative, "Met Captain Pollard on Nantucket. To most islanders a nobody. To me, one of the most extraordinary men I have ever met." In time, he wrote Moby-Dick: or, The Whale, in which a sperm whale is said to be capable of similar acts. Melville's book draws its inspiration from the first part of the Essex story, ending with the sinking.
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a National Book Award winning work of maritime history by Nathaniel Philbrick. It tells the story of the Essex, including the point of view of Nickerson in addition to that of Chase.
The tale of the Essex is retold by staff members almost daily at the Nantucket Whaling Museum.
The story was also the inspiration for a notable popular song, the title track to the band Mountain's 1971 album Nantucket Sleighride.
The story of the Essex was used by the 2009 BBC TV series South Pacific in episode 3, "Endless Blue", to illustrate the difficulty of survival for humans in the open ocean.
Read more about this topic: Essex (whaleship)
Famous quotes containing the word legacy:
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)