- Death to the living
                              Long life to the killers
                             Success to sailors wives
                            And greasy luck to whalers - 

On June 2, 1816 The French frigate Meduse ran aground 30 miles off the shore of Senegal in West Africa. During a botched attempt at unloading the ships cargo in order to set her right 146 men and women were moved to a make shift raft, there not being boats enough to bring all ashore. A gale blew up pulling the raft away from the floundering ship into open water. It drifted in stormy seas for 15 days. During that time passengers fought constantly; first for a safe position on the ever heaving craft, then for food, then for water. When it was rescued only 67 souls remained, the rest had been washed away or killed and cannibalized. I have seen what I was told to be a faithful reproduction of the famous painting the tragedy inspired. A work of horror, survivors grasp at the bare timbers of the raft while the sea pitches a torrent around them, still reality could not have been so pleasant. 

The Francis Mary, a 398 ton merchant ship en route from Canada to Liverpool went mast over in a storm on February 1, 1826. The ship drifted on its side for 22 days, being slowly torn apart by the ceaseless storm driven waters. The 14 survivors, including two women clung to the wreck. After ten days the stores of food ran out, two days after that the first of the survivors died. When they were rescued on march 7 by the  HMS Captain Blonde the lieutenant in charge of the operation questioned how it was they had fresh meat aboard. 'No sir, tis part of a man. One of our unfortunate crew' he was told. Later reports told of how Anne Saunders one of the female survivors had  butchered her fiance after he had died of dehydration and claimed her right as the betrothed to drink his blood. 

In May of the same year The General Brock was run down by another brig on its way to Gaspe, on the wild coast of Canada.  8 crew members survived for 12 days in an open boat with no provisions by drinking the blood and eating the meat from the bodies of those that had died of exposure, dehydration and hunger. 

Dec. 5, 1830 The Quixote sailing for Liverpool was pooped by hurricane force winds. 5 days later the survivors began eating a dead crew member they had lashed to the wreck. Only the Mate and second Mate survived to be rescued. 

Most famous in this part of the world is the story of one of our own. On Nov. 20, 1820 The whale boat Essex was struck and sunk by an enraged sperm whale. She went masts under in less than an hour. The crew split up into 3 life boats and set off for the far coast of South America over 3,000 miles away. They navigated open waters for four months. Stopping in on unknown islands for as long as they dared to provision themselves with what little amounts of food and fresh water there was to be found on those almost barren atolls of dead coral. Storms separated the boats and the men became weaker as time drew on while they drifted in the great emptiness of the pacific. The first man to be eaten was Lawson Chase who died of hunger. The crew deliberated over the act but necessity won the day and they ate his heart first. From then on those who died were immediately pieced out for food and when the last of the dying passed the living drew lots voluntarily. In March two of the surviving boats were rescued off the shores of Chile. In the first, squatting at opposite ends of that boat, each guarding a hoard of human bones from which they had sucked the marrow clean were two men; nearly reduced to animals after their ordeal at sea. One of them my own Uncle, Owen Chase. 

This is only a short recounting of more than 20 like yarns I know by heart, all of which having occurred in this century. Surely these are a mere smattering of incidents that occur among the worlds navies. This is the custom of the sea which every sailor knows. It doubtlessly has been going on for as long as men have taken to exploring the great oceans. There is no law that forbids, in times of dire need, survival cannibalism and even the word of god as taken from the bible vacillates on eating the flesh of men but we who never ship are steadfast that to eat human flesh is the worst type of crime and an unpardonable sin.   

The Boy From Nantucket

This hazy summer morn where the sheep can hardly be seen for the fog marks my twenty first year on this island. The air is cool for the time of year and so I remain tucked deep inside the warmth of my bed covers awaiting a breakfast feast. I expect our cook has been busy preparing my favorite foods since dawn. I should think the occasion warrants a bowel of porridge followed by smoked cod, eggs, a rasher of bacon, and a large mug of buttered rum for strength against the day to come. 

A celebration is scheduled for this afternoon at our friends meeting house. There will be a mass and prayers of course along with no small amount of admonishment from the elders for me to get on with life and become a man I suspect. I am the sole male of my family who remains a lubber.

I live in a house of women. My mother and sisters along with three girl servants labor each day to keep the holds and berths of our home neat as wax.  Under this matriarchal sisterhood my comings and goings are of little interest. One could say I am a bachelor if I weren't still a boy. 

My own father Captain Samuel Coffin is long retired to Davy Jones. My eldest brothers have all gone out to make their way and fortune in the watery parts of the world as is the practice among us Nantucket Quakers.

There are in fact few boys my age around. I use the word boy knowingly for on this Island the twenty first year is one not many hope to see. Most lads have shipped by the age of fourteen or fifteen, some as young as ten and many will have been crushed, drowned, frozen, baked, starved or in any of a thousand ways perished at sea long before their twenty first birthday. All in glorious pursuit of wondrous sperm. 

That is what we Nantucketers dream of, sperm; gallons, barrels, hogs heads of the sweet smelling stuff. It is what has drawn us to the unknown waters of the world. Why we have mapped wild coasts and called to port at savage isles. The only substance that can slake our rapacious thirst is sperm. It is for sperm that we live and die. Sperm is wealth and the reason we have mastered the leviathan, harvested its precious oils and by such made Nantucket known the world over and we Quakers as hunters and butchers of the great whale. Our ships are roving sperm banks; our homes built on its proceeds, our futures bartered on its trade. The oil we reap feeds city lights the world over as well the lamps of Kings and Queens. Our amber gris is used in lotions and perfumes to sweeten the skin of ladies and gentlemen of high society and industry depends on us. Nantucket is the greatest sperm oil producing port to ever exist. 

And yet I prefer not to take part.

Jedideah Folger Coffin is the name my good parents fitted to me. It is a fine name that I've many reasons to give thanks for. A solid name that identifies me to all as native born  whose ancestral reach grasps back 200 years to the very first civilized inhabitants of our island. 

The Folgers, Coffins, Starbucks, Macy's and Gardners came here when this was a wild place known only to savages and built an empire. Our whale ships number more than all other ports and harbors combined. Any given day of the year Nantucketers are cruising the heat stilled tropics, the frozen arctic sea and every mile of water in between. All due to the fortitude, guidance and wisdom handed down to us through the venerable society of friends. First established here by my own great, great, great grand mother Marry Coffin Starbuck. 

It is every Nantucket lads goal in life to become captain of his own whaling vessel. For someone as high born as myself it is expected to be so before the age of thirty. 

We're weened on the tales and speech of whalers. Our childhoods are spent exploring the dark holds and playing atop the spars and yards of ships at moor. Our educations conducted as much in the reading of naval charts as by our tutors lessons. Nantucketers know more about sailing in pursuit of the parmacetti whale by the age of 10 or 12 then any bumpkin or off islanders even after his first 3 year voyage. Tar and hemp be our chalk and board.  

All of this makes it that much more difficult for me to eschew the obligation of my family name and ship. That I choose to remain a boy in the eyes of friends and family has been somewhat of a scandal on the island. That I am for all intents and purposes still a boy and treated thus is a terrible embarrassment to my elders and a disgrace to my brothers and cousins and yet I feel as innocent of it all as a spotted lamb.

Today will be a busy day with appointments and requirements all around the town. Aside from the rather formal birthday mass at the friends meeting hall this afternoon there is to be a much more raucous celebration at the Double Spout Inn, my regular place of business.

In addition I'll have to attend to my normal dealings which will begin with a rantoscoot around the Guinea with my companions Lawrence and William. This daily tour may seem little more than an idle stroll while trading gossip with the inn keepers, land lords, errant sailors, heathens and savages that make that dark place their home but, in fact it is the back bone of my business in trade.

We three roam the streets meeting with any new faces who may have washed up to our port gleaning information about ships that have paid off well or better still those that came in short – seeking out any new connections, talking with the sailors and vetting what trinkets or fetish they may have to barter. Every sailor is a potential source, as I am always on the hunt for a new supply of china opium.

It's opium and the various distillations of that famed drug that fill my purse. I buy and sell it the way a commodities speculator may deal in cotton or in sperm oil. Buying my stock at the lowest price and selling at the highest. In order to do this it's advantageous to meet Seamen just after they have demobbed so as to ascertain in the highest possible spirits what they've brought along in their chests. 

Seamen often find themselves in financial need after only a few days on land commencing a 3 year trip. Many a tar concludes a long voyage with ideas of collecting large amounts of money but more often there is little left when the ships accounting is tallied. A long lay, that is a small percentage of the ships profits, from the start of a trip is easily reduced at the ships store over the course of years at sea leaving some with only a few coins in their purse for all of the spit and skin they've given for it.  Being used to having all of their needs allocated to them while aboard sailors forget how to mind their monies, if they ever knew, and as the port holds many temptations only dreamed of while at sea even old tars are soon short. For some the curios picked up at ports of call remains their sole wealth.  

This is when it is most advantageous for me to happen upon them, so it is that I make my daily calls at all of the boarding houses and eating places around the town seeking out the long faces sipping meager cups of chicory with empty stomachs. In this way I’m able to get my allotment of opium, as well as whatever other rarities I might be to sell on at goodly prices. We Quakers of Nantucket have a well earned reputation of being very close and clever traders. 

My profits are very nice in this brokering that I've developed, for just as my suppliers sell on my terms so do my buyers pay a handsome price for the product. Many of our highest placed and well thought of, not to mention powerful, women are enthusiastic users of the drug and though in closed circles it may be common knowledge among the wider society using the drug carries such a stigma that even those who enjoy it daily petition against its sale and transport. 

So each day I perform my survey of the guinea and then proceed to Water Street where I make my rounds among the better homes between the docks and Windmill Hill, visiting with our widows of the sea. These visits are not strictly professional, we are a tight knit community here and many of my customers are also relations or at the least close acquaintances. There is a level formality to my visits as befits our station but there is also a intimacy between us that allows my customers to admit to and seek relief for other types of boredom. It does happen on a rather common occasion that these ladies feel lonely in ways that a simple cup of opium tea can not abate.

They are human of course and as the good lord has made them they have human needs and desires and so I also make it a part of my visits to service those needs as well. For some it is to share a bed for an hour or so. They seek physical satisfaction but also have a deep need to feel loved that I, as a boy, fulfill nicely by being petted and hugged to. If the woman may feel too close in relation, shy of herself, or better suited to satisfy herself I also supply that personal instrument known in trade as He's-At-Homes. For some its both, for two it's all together. 

He's-At-Homes also come from sailors who either pick them up at their stops in far ports or in trade with other sailors they meet along their voyages. The very best are the glass variety made in Constantinople. Wonderfully sculpted, weighty and very fulfilling, I've been told. Works of art really that trade at a price matching that high aesthetic category. Others come from Japan, India, Spain carved from wood, bone and soap stone each with their own particular characteristics and size. 
The glass works are set aside for the wives of captains or those of the most successful first mates. We never speak of these purchases, a subject much to intimate for open discussion. All suggestion and description is covered in a highly obscure innuendo so that if we are overheard no one could have the least idea of the subject at hand. It is my practice to leave a package containing the desired object along with the opium until my next visit. This leaves the young woman a week or so to deliberate on the cost versus the worth while communing with her silent lover. In the end I always find payment to my satisfaction.  

The women of Nantucket occupy a unique position. No other town in this country and perhaps in the world has risen the importance of its matriarchy the way we have. With most of our men spending half of their lives at sea it is left to the women to maintain our towns interests both in business and municipality. Not every sea widow is in the habit of using opium or satisfying their desires with glass or plaster phallus’s. There are some 400 actual widows and at least thrice as many sea widows, women left on their own for years at a time while their husbands are at sea. This on an island with a population no greater then 8,000 souls all told, and much of them off islanders and transients.  

A good number of our widows are content to have husbands spend the best part of their lives chasing whales. Amongst the young women of our island there is a society who pledge only to marry the daring and most intrepid whale hunters, the boat swains and harpooners. Those who will rise to be mates and ultimatley captains. Those that is to say with the greatest financial prospects as well as the highest rates of mortality. These young women and, many only girls when they marry, become the power brokers behind our great whaling wealth and are much more useful to know than their husbands. 
Generally the women who belong to this society are the daughters of the oldest families, raised and tutored to take lead roles. With so much of our municipal and political organizing left to our women relations between them run deep and often overflow from business, organizing of education and Friends affairs to matters of the heart. Children are raised here around and sometimes part of female – female love relationships. The daughters of Lesbos. Scissor sisters. 

We are all very accustomed to this type of love. We know them; they are our mothers, aunts and sisters. There is of course the counter balance of what the men get up to while at sea, many of my childhood mates shipped at the age of 10 or 12 with a captain who had a sweet eye for such lads. Though we Quakers are forgiving we don't permit relations of that sort in our town openly. The Guinea being an exception, for foreigners, heathens and savages are left to their own. What happens at sea or in the confines of ones own home is a matter for god to contend with. 

William and Lawrence far from friends of mine are a pair of half breed Wampanoag Indians who act as my escorts and assistants while carrying out transactions. The boys are useful in so many ways as they span the great divide of race as well as being quick with hand and foot. Though they are stout, strong and brave fellows, both have proven unworthy to ship, Lawrence with an unsure stomach and William because of a incorrigible proclivity for strong drink that renders him useless for days at a time. 

The wampanoag, also known as Gay Headers, were the aboriginal Indians of our island. They labored here under the direction of my ancestors to create civilization. Sadly they are all but gone now. Wiped out by some unknown plague that their heathen ways had no cure for. They survive today only in the form of half breeds and other bastards like my companions. 

I spend much time in their company which may seem odd my being kin to the elite of Nantucket society and they being savages and dirt eaters. Fact of business though they have come to the Friends long ago and count themselves as one with the Quakers. There is also the fact that both William and Lawrence in spite of their pagan blood are island born and that makes them more trusted than any green hat just over on the packet boat from the mainland, regardless of their dusky coloring. 

They make an odd couple when strolling. Lawrence being a head taller and William with twice the girth of his mate. They are both self conscious about their dress and so wear all their finery everyday which tends to make them look comical as most of these clothes have trickled down from my own wardrobe and so tend to be a bit short on Lawrence and a bit tight on william yet they stroll out tipping their long abused hats to both the brothers and sisters of town while looking down on the tars and transients who roam the Guienea in little more than tattered rags.  

Yet perhaps I speak too harshly of the two for if they are not my friends, in fact my bosom mates who else would be? Surely not my boyhood friends nor relations with whom I was raised and now have nothing but insults or pity for me. Not the sailors and merchants who may come begging in time of need but turn a scornful eye when their purses are full. Certainly not the elders who chastise and harangue me at every meeting to make a man of myself while I confidently increase my fortune by the day picking away at the trade they are too ignorant to see happening all around them.  
They wear my hand me down clothes, eat at my table, share in my profits. We twine hands at the meeting house and drink from the same tankards at the Inn. Surely they are my own brethren then these two fellows who exist not in one world but both the Christian and heathen, the white man's and the red, civilized and yet still savage at heart.  

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