History & Film | There She Blows! In the Heart of the Sea

Chris Hemsworth as First Mate Owen Chase of the ill-fated whaleship Essex.

The majority of the time, when I screw something up, a moment’s reflection is all it takes for me to pinpoint exactly where things went off the rails. But did you ever have one of those “how did I get here?” moments? Suddenly you find yourself in a situation, and despite having traversed the requisite path to arrive at that destination, you can’t figure out exactly what you did wrong to end up where you currently are. You look behind you, and the breadcrumbs are gone. Such was my plight as I stood, attired in a 14^th-century Basque whaler’s costume, waiting to parade out onto a stage for an audience of a couple hundred HNS conference attendees.

Introversion being a special gift of mine, this prospect was somewhat torturous, in a way that even a couple of hastily tossed-back alcoholic beverages couldn’t mitigate. I furiously pondered, and finally came up with someone to blame for my predicament: Nathaniel Philbrick. Perhaps you know Mr. Philbrick, one of that blessed breed of nonfiction authors who manages to turn the minutiae of a particular historical event/period/industry/personality into a read so compelling it puts fiction to shame. While he’s covered everything from Little Big Horn to the Mayflower, my fashion-show distress sprung entirely from a single offering, Philbrick’s National Book Award-winning work, In the Heart of the Sea.

In the Heart of the Sea is subtitled “The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex,” and the basic story is this: in 1819, a crew of 21 men set out from Nantucket on the 240-ton Essex, seeking sperm whales for their spermaceti and blubber, which rendered into valuable oil, a livelihood for the whalemen, and profits for their Quaker backers. What is known to history of the fate of the Essex comes primarily from three sources: its 29-year-old captain on his first command, George Pollard; his first mate, Owen Chase; and the ship’s youngest occupant, 14-year-old cabin boy Thomas Nickerson. In 1821, a handful of starving survivors, floating aimlessly in the Essex’s whaleboats for over 90 days, were picked up by passing ships. Near death, the men clutched the bones of their fellow sailors, whom they’d devoured. Almost as terrifying as their situation was what they said had put them there: an 85 foot-long sperm whale that, according to them, intentionally and maliciously attacked and sunk their ship. As Chase put it, they were “stove by a whale.”

Sound familiar? It should, since the woeful fate of the Essex provided the basis for Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Man against behemoth, cannibalism, surviving the cruel sea against all odds – is there a need to sensationalize elements of a story this gripping? Why, of course there is, says Hollywood! Enter In the Heart of the Sea, the movie version, directed by Ron Howard and starring Chris Hemsworth as Owen Chase.

While the historical survivors told their story early and often to many and sundry (Owen Chase published his for general consumption, and Nickerson also produced a written account), Howard has framed the movie as the difficult process of Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), now an old man, reluctantly dredging up his horrific tale for the first time and pouring it out to Melville (Ben Whishaw) in one marathon night of catharsis. Enter flashbacks of beefsteak Owen Chase, with Nickerson as awe-struck young observer.

The historical Captain Pollard was both older and of equal, if not greater, seafaring experience than the 23-year-old Chase, and both had a former (and amiable) working relationship, having served together on the Essex’s previous voyages as first mate and boatsteerer, respectively. Both had been promoted up the ladder when the Essex’s captain retired. But the movie has a superior Chase being passed over in favor of a greener than green Pollard simply because Pollard’s family is affluent and native Nantucketer (a singularly insular bunch; the movie gets this vibe right). The stage is set for the film Pollard (Benjamin Walker) to make a series of haughty missteps which the smarter, more competent Chase warns him against, engaging in a…measuring contest for which the martinet Pollard is singularly ill-equipped. By the time the CGIed monster whale destroys the Essex and stalks the survivors left adrift in three whaleboats, it’s obvious to whom the men will look for salvation. Since there’s already the man against the sea and man against the beast dynamic, pitting first mate against captain seems needless piling on.

I loved the book, and I wanted to like this movie. It certainly has its positive aspects (yes, beyond “Thor with oars”). The Nantucket scenes provide a sense of what a bustling port of this period might have felt like, and the portrayal of the Nantucket sleigh-ride (i.e., when a whaleboat was pulled along behind the harpooned whale at what was, for the 19^th century, breakneck speed) gives one a sense of how exhilarating whalemen might have found their very dangerous chosen profession. And yet…

Opie, I expected better. I couldn’t get past an anachronistic moralizing tone and what one reviewer dubbed the film’s “overwhelming sense of artificiality.”¹ Other concerns aside, watching a nautical offering such as, say, Master and Commander provides a sweeping sense of the sea: its enormity, its beauty, but also its peril. The corollary is the love of the ship, no matter how indifferent a vessel, as a representation of safety and “home” in this unforgiving landscape. This film can’t seem to manage either, suffering from an excess of cartoonish CGI and outlandish action scenes. The appearance of the whale itself does not impress, a problem that cannot be overlooked. And while I take no issue with a film that espouses a viewpoint, attempting to equate the whale’s revenge as visited upon a mankind deserving of it due to his lust for oil (subtle) subverts and ignores the 19^th-century whaleman’s worldview: the sea as frontier with game to be harvested, upon an earth over which God had given him dominion. What happened to the Essex was such a shock precisely because the Quakerish Nantucketers saw it as an affront, an inversion of the natural order of things, not a warning or deserved rebuke from nature. Perhaps that’s the main problem with the film version of In the Heart of the Sea: it can’t seem to decide exactly what type of film it wants to be. CGIed action spectacular, monster-movie à la Jaws, quietly desperate survival story, Sea Shepherd revenge fantasy, Mutiny on the Bounty-type rivalry tale…to me, it seemed it just couldn’t find itself, and vacillating between all these possible foci meant immersion in none.

I also couldn’t help but take issue with those historical figures unfairly maligned here. This is not because I have a personal stake in their reputations or don’t appreciate/condone dramatic license, but because dramatically, it added nothing – more the opposite. While undeniably unseasoned as a captain, the historical Pollard’s main fault was listening to Owen Chase when he knew better; choosing Chase’s proposed course over his own better judgment ended in countless unnecessary days at sea, the deaths of many, and the terrible sufferings of the few who survived (all of which could have been avoided – why not play up the pathos of that?). And if anyone gets undeservedly aspersed here, it’s Pollard’s cousin, Owen (in the movie rechristened Henry) Coffin. In the film, he’s an entitled and hysterical brat who pulls a gun on Chase, along with other odd little outbursts that seem out of place and nonsensical. The historical Coffin, a boy of only 17, showed amazing bravery – when things became desperate, he drew the short straw. Pollard, who had sworn to the boy’s mother to protect him, offered to take his place, but Coffin refused, selflessly laying down his life in order to offer his shipmates some chance at survival. This unfortunate boy quite literally took it like a man – “it” being a bullet to the head with the knowledge that his shipmates would eat him.

Admittedly, I’m a nerd of the first order, so perhaps I simply would’ve been happier with a documentary² which, obviously, isn’t what the Hollywood version of In the Heart of the Sea could or should be if it wants to draw any kind of a typical box office audience. Yet I missed what made Philbrick’s work so engrossing: its educational component. He focuses on Nantucket’s peculiarly insular culture, the plight of the women left behind (given a film flyby in the person of Chase’s wife) and their unprecedented independence, the Quaker worldview and, perhaps most fascinatingly, the details of whaling, from boatsteerers’ duties to try-pots to whale behavior. In fact, I found all this so interesting that it started me down the dark path of reading all about the whaling industry. Not long afterward, I found myself seated at a conference dinner next to a nice lady who happened to mention that her last novel involved Basque whalers of the 14^th century. How fortuitous, for I have read about whaling; I can make this kind of small talk! We had a discussion about the differences in technique between the Basques and the Nantucketers five centuries later. All was going well until she mentioned that she needed her whaling costume modeled at the historical fashion show, and she was sure it would fit me. There were polite refusals on my part and just as polite refusals to acknowledge my refusals on hers until, finally, lacking any sort of vertebral column, I gave up and gave in. And thus, dear reader, ends the tragic story of how I found myself on stage in front of a couple hundred people, modelling a 14^th-century Basque whaling outfit. Thank you, Nathaniel Philbrick.

But as to the movie, my two cents’ worth (adjusted for inflation): it’s worth watching, but whether you see Hollywood’s version or not, read the book. Just be careful when you talk about it to strangers.

Notes:

1. Kermode, Mike. “In the Heart of the Sea: O Blubber, Where Art Thou?” The Guardian. 27 December 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/dec/27/in-the-heart-of-the-sea-review-ron-howard-ben-whishaw-cillian-murphy
2. For those interested, there’s a fantastic PBS American Experience documentary, Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World, which chronicles the whaling industry in America from the 17^th to the 19^th centuries, and prominently features the Essex’s story.

About the contributor: BETHANY LATHAM is a professor, librarian, and Managing Editor of HNR. She publishes in various scholarly and popular journals, as well as writing for EBSCO’s NoveList database. She serves as Articles Editor and a regular reviewer for Reference Reviews.

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Published in Historical Novels Review  |  Issue 75, February 2016