Of the two readings that we were set to read this week, The True-Life Horror That Inspired ‘Moby Dick’ was significantly more enthralling to me. In particular, due to the nature of the tragedy and the timing of the event. As mentioned in the article by Gilbert King, the trouble began for the Essex in 1819 – 65 years before the first account of the criminalization of nautical cannibalism for survival in the court case R v Dudley and Stephens in 1884. Arguably, the Essex tragedy was significantly worse – with only 8 of the 20 man crew surviving vs. the 3 of the 4 man crew surviving, with the person who died having already been gravely ill due to drinking sea water. The crew of the Essex was also at sea significantly longer – 3 months as opposed to the 3 weeks of the Mignonette.

I had actually learned about the tragedy of the Mignonette through a podcast that I listen to from time to time – Lore by Aaron Mahnke – so I was not surprised with the cannibalism in the tale of the Essex, but the degree of the tragedy was not lost on me; the cruel irony of being forced to abandon their whaling ship due to a whale attack, the avoidance of the closer islands due to rumors of cannibalism only to succumb to it themselves, as well as Pollard having to eat his first cousin that he had promised to look out for, all of it was a horrible series of tragic errors. The fact that 8 people managed to survive at all was truly miraculous.

Reading about the truth behind the story has made me significantly more interested in reading Moby-Dick than I had already been. There are so many layers within the history of the narrative, alongside the narrative itself, that I’m really excited at the prospect of coming to class discussions looking like Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia when he had his Pepe Silvia conspiracy board.

[Edit: Fixed formatting, removed the HTML]