In 1820, an angry sperm whale sank the whaleship Essex, leaving its desperate crew to drift for more than ninety days in three tiny boats. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex Nantucket-“faraway land” in the language of the island’s native inhabitants, the Wampanoag-was a deposit of sand eroding into an inexorable ocean, and all its residents, even if they had never sailed away from the island, were keenly aware of the inhumanity of the sea. Interred across the island were the corpses of anonymous seamen who had washed onto its wave-pummeled shores. Especially in winter, when storms were the most deadly, wrecks occurred almost weekly.
Nantucket was surrounded by a constantly shifting maze of shoals that made the simple act of approaching or departing the island an often harrowing and sometimes disastrous lesson in seamanship. Stacks of oil casks lined each wharf as two-wheeled, horse-drawn carts continually shuttled back and forth. Tied up to the wharves or anchored in the harbor were, typically, 15 to 20 whale ships, along with dozens of smaller vessels, mainly sloops and schooners that carried trade goods to and from the island. Along the waterfront, four solid-fill wharves extended more than 100 yards into the harbor. When the Essex departed from Nantucket for the last time in the summer of 1819, Nantucket had a population of about 7,000, most of whom lived on a gradually rising hill crowded with houses and punctuated by windmills and church towers. While what happened to the crew of that ill-fated ship is an epic unto itself-and the inspiration behind the climax of Moby-Dick-just as compelling in its own quintessentially American way is the island microcosm that the Nantucket whalemen called home. It’s a story that I hadn’t begun to fully appreciate until after more than a decade of living on the island when I started researching In the Heart of the Sea, a nonfictional account of the loss of the whaleship Essex, which I revisit here. And yet lurking beneath this almost ethereal surface is the story of a community that sustained one of the bloodiest businesses the world has ever known.
The evidence of this bygone glory can still be seen along the upper reaches of the town’s Main Street, where the cobbles seem to dip and rise like an undulant sea and where the houses-no matter how grand and magisterial-still evoke the humble spirituality of the island’s Quaker past. For a relatively brief period during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, this lonely crescent of sand at the edge of the Atlantic was the whaling capital of the world and one of the wealthiest communities in America. More than 25 miles off the coast of Massachusetts and only 14 miles long, Nantucket is, as Herman Melville wrote in Moby-Dick, “away off shore.” But what makes Nantucket truly different is its past. Part of what makes the island unique is its place on the map. It’s also a place of picture-perfect beaches where even at the height of summer you can stake out a wide swath of sand to call your own. In the Heart of the Sea hits theaters alongside other late 2015 blockbusters including The Big Short, Creed, The Danish Girl, and The Good Dinosaur.Today Nantucket Island is a fashionable summer resort: a place of T-shirt shops and trendy boutiques. The men are forced to take unthinkable steps for survival, or at least that's what an old Tom Nickerson later tells author Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw), who would go on to write the tale as Moby-Dick. The whale continues to attack them and they struggle to stay alive during the three-month period at sea. The ship sinks and leaves the crew members fending for their lives. Thousands of miles off shore, the Essex is hit by a massive and quite angry sperm whale. While they don't initially all get along, they soon find out that there are much bigger problems ahead. (Benjamin Walker), First Mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth), Second Mate Matthew Joy (Cillian Murphy) and cabin boy Thomas Nickerson (Tom Holland and Brendan Gleeson), meet one another as they set out on a voyage. In In the Heart of the Sea, it's 1820 and members of the whaling ship Essex, including inexperienced Captain George Pollard, Jr. Directed by Ron Howard, In the Heart of the Sea opened in theaters on November 11, 2015. The adventure thriller, which follows the whaling ship Essex, was adapted into a screenplay by Charles Leavitt.
#Captain george pollard jr. movie
In the Heart of the Sea movie quotes bring the novel of the same name by Nathaniel Philbrick, based on the story that inspired Moby-Dick, to life.
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