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. Today Nantucket Island is a fashionable summer resort: a place of T-shirt shops and trendy boutiques.
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