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CHASE, Owen.
Narrative of the Wreck of the Whale-Ship Essex of Nantucket which was Destroyed by a Whale in the Pacific Ocean in the Year 1819 told by Owen Chase First Mate Thomas Chappel Second Mate and George Pollard Captain of the Said Vessel….
London, Golden Cockerel Press, 1935.
Folio, with 12 engravings by Robert Gibbings; original green and yellow cloth, with a little rubbing to binding, otherwise good.
The Golden Cockerel Press edition of this classic Pacific whaling rarity: the account of the famous Essex shipwreck, whose sinking by a whale was, apart from being a sensational story in its own right, a landmark in American literature as the inspiration for the climax of Melville's Moby Dick.
Chase, first mate of the Essex and a native of Nantucket, provides a first-hand description of the ramming and sinking of the ship by a furious sperm whale on 20 November 1819, some two thousand miles west of the Galapagos. The surviving twenty crew members struggled to exist in three open boats, with crew members on all three boats eventually resorting to cannibalism. Only eight lived through the ordeal. The voyage of the two remaining boats which were rescued off the coast of South America was twice as long as that of Bligh in the launch of the Bounty.
This edition was limited to 275 copies, illustrated with wonderful wood-engravings by Robert Gibbings.
Forster, 17; Hill, p.50; Howes, 318 ('c'); Huntress, 205C; Starbuck, p. 228; Whaling Masters, p.223.
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