REVENGE OF THE WHALE by Nathaniel Philbrick
In 1819, the whaleship Essex departed from Nantucket with a crew of twenty islanders. A year later, the ship experienced a deliberate and fatal attack from a giant sperm whale, which sank the ship itself and left the entire crew stranded, thousands of miles from land, in small whaleboats. Although they could have reached the Society Islands in about a month–during which their salvaged provisions would have sustained them–the first and second mates feared that the islands might be inhabited by cannibals, and persuaded the captain to sail for the coast of South America instead, a much longer journey that would require a considerable amount of luck. In the end, this decision would cost the lives of over half the crew. When the eight men who survived were rescued by another whaleship over 90 days later, they were starving, dehydrated, and muttering in madness–clutching the bones of their shipmates whose flesh they had been forced to eat.
Revenge of the Whale tells the harrowing story of the attack and the 93 day ordeal that followed–the horrifying tragedy that inspired Melville’s Moby Dick. Revenge of the Whale is the teen-version of Philbrick’s National Book Award winning In the Heart of the Sea, which I am sure is equally if not more engaging. Philbrick bases his narrative primarily on the written account of one survivor, the fourteen year old cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson, with some additional detail from the account of the first mate, Owen Chase. The only slightly frustrating thing about Revenge of the Whale is that Philbrick does not provide citations for his quotes, so it is impossible to trace his sources. I would also not recommend reading this book during lunch, like I did. It is a bit gruesome.
If you liked Revenge of the Whale, you might like Black Hands, White Sails, The Longitude Prize, or Titanic: Voices from the Disaster.
Susan the Librarian 