Un muy buen libro, del cual aprendí bastante, la historia contada es sumamente dramática y me mantuvo intrigada durante el tiempo que me tardé en leer el libro, tiene datos históricos algo que a mí me gusta bastante. Lo considero uno de los mejores libros que leí en el 2015.

This was a tragic story that focused on suffering, resilience, and having the will to live. This story was part history book, novel, and adventure story all rolled into one account of the whaling ship Essex. The ship left Nantucket, Massachusetts, and eventually wound up in the Pacific Ocean about 2,000 miles from South America. They were attacked and their ship sunk by a large sperm whale. The remaining crew went through literal hell while making their way back to South America; many drastic measures were undertook in order to ensure survival.

Overall this was a quick read and I would recommend it to anyone who likes this style of writing by Nathaniel Philbrick. Thanks! P

Although In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is scheduled to be released as a movie soon, that's not why I read it. For years now (it came out in 2000), it has languished unread on my classroom library shelf. I wanted to read it, however, due to my own family history. On my father's side, we have many whalers who shipped out of New Bedford. This book focuses on the whalers out of Nantucket -- a tight knit, Quaker community that became wealthy on the whale.

The Essex is also famous for becoming the real-life model of the Pequod and Herman Melville's book, Moby-Dick. That much I knew. What I didn't know is that it also inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write his short story "The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym." It was, in short, the Titanic of its day, a story that captured the seafaring world's imagination, as it told the unusual tale of a sperm whale, some 85-feet long, that unexpectedly and uncharacteristically attacked a ship and sunk it.

The book starts with some background on the little island off of Massachusetts and the portrait couldn't be any more different from what we think of when we think Nantucket today. Then it was all about prayer and hard work dependent on the sea and specifically whale oil. Now? Vacationers' playground and wealthy man's haunt, is more like it. What can I say? Sometimes things change for the worse.

Then we travel out with Capt. Pollard, First Mate Chase, and crew around Cape Horn and up the west coast of So. America. Once they head out into the not-so-Pacific waters for whales, all hell breaks loose.

From then on, after the mad whale (no, not white, for those taking notes), it's a few men in three small whaleboats with not enough water and not enough food to reach So. America. As you might expect, decisions good and mostly bad are made. And one island stumbled upon proves to be most inhospitable. And, ultimately, the specter of cannibalism enters the picture, proving once again that there's nothing a desperate man won't do to his fellow man, especially when it comes to hunger and deprivation.

All and all, a rip-roaring, well-written voyage. I might even see the movie, and I loathe movies. So there.

I'm a sucker for stories about exploration and survival. My bookshelves are littered with them: "The Lost City of Z," "Into Thin Air,""The River of Doubt," "Blue Latitudes," "The Perfect Storm," "The Terror." You hand me a book about shipping disasters or Amazonian perils or Shackleton or the search for the Northwest Passage, and if it is at all well-researched and readable, I am in. But find me one that references something I know, an area with which I am already familiar - and there is something even more tempting and immediate about its draw. That's why "In The Heart of the Sea" seems like a book that was custom written just for me. A thrilling true story about a shipping disaster in the 1800's that gives brilliant detail about the Nantucket seafaring community of the time, its uniquely constructed society, its dependence upon sperm whale oil for its financial success, all of the anthropological nuances of that culture brought to life, but also tells - in harrowing detail - the story of one tragic voyage, a voyage that would ultimately become the basis for one of literature's greatest novels, "Moby Dick."

Exhaustively researched, this book succeeds on many levels, largely due to its investment in the lives and fates of our main characters. Much the way Sebastian Junger made us experience (as if first-hand) the unique swordfishing community of Gloucester in his book "A Perfect Storm" and made it a place we could literally see in our mind's eye, populated with people we came to know and care about, so too does Nathaniel Philbrick bring the early Quaker enclave of Nantucket to life and attempt to describe the inner lives of the men who would go to sea on this ill-fated voyage, as well as those of the women left behind, often for two years at a time. The description of early Nantucket, in fact, was nearly as interesting as the description of the tragedy itself, one of those rare occasions when the backstory really is as essential to our understanding as the main event.

I won't get into specifics here, but the quest for sperm whale oil in the 1800s may have been one of the most dangerous and incomparably brutal occupations ever known to humans, and Philbrick describes the process in awe-inspiring detail. That every crew who sailed for that purpose did not suffer a similar fate is the true miracle of the tale. I will tell you this. This is not a book about a tragedy, it is a tale about a series of tragedies, each one more disheartening and insurmountable than the last. Be prepared for a dark voyage into corners of the human psyche few care to contemplate. Yes, there are glimmers of hope along the way, and yes, there is a great deal of history and adventure here. But at its heart, this is a tale of bad luck, poor decisions, and the truly dire consequences that can occur when those elements converge with the power of the sea and its creatures, unmoved by the desire of men to master and tame them. Every bad thing you can imagine happens in these pages. Even a few things you never dared to imagine. In less talented hands this would be a lurid tale of brutality, gore, death and despair. In Philbrick's hands, it is a thoughtful narrative on what living beings are able to endure, how our behaviors define us, and in the end, what constitutes humanity.

I regret that I didn't actually write this up back in March. This was really a good book and it is non-fiction. About a whaling ship that had underwent some terribly drastic circumstances. The journey of the Essex was disastrous enough it really was a good read and the things these men went through.
And then it inspired Moby Dick.

This book was...okay. My biggest issue is that the only real action in the story happens in a span of a couple pages, and the rest of it is just page after page of the surviving crew members slowly suffering to death after they're set adrift. I feel like that segment (which was most the book) was way more drawn-out than it needed to be, perhaps in an attempt to make the book seem more dramatic by leaning on the morbid elements of the story. Not really up my alley, to be be honest.

Um livro de não-ficção a relatar o naufrágio de um baleeiro norte-americano em 1820. À partida, não seria algo que me suscitasse muito interesse, mas como a sua adaptação cinematográfica estreou há pouco tempo e a história aqui relatada inspirou o famoso Moby Dick, de Herman Melville (que ainda não li), senti a motivação suficiente para viajar até ao século XIX e embarcar nesta perigosa viagem.

O início do livro contém o necessário enquadramento da partida do Essex da ilha de Nantucket, à data a maior potência na baleação. Sabia alguma coisa sobre a atividade, por ter visitado o Museu dos Baleeiros na ilha do Pico, mas nada que se compare com o nível de detalhe aqui apresentado. Os termos técnicos náuticos e relacionados com a atividade começam a abundar e, nessa altura, temi que o livro se fosse tornar algo aborrecido. Não poderia estar mais enganada. Os termos técnicos continuam, o dia-a-dia da tripulação é descrito com detalhe, ainda que não exaustivamente (o que é compreensível, dada a distância temporal e os documentos disponíveis relativamente à viagem), a caça à baleia é bastante explorada, mas a verdade é que não consegui parar de ler. Há já alguns meses que isto não me acontecia, por isso tenho de tirar o chapéu a Nathaniel Philbrick: conseguiu contar de uma forma muito interessante uma história que facilmente poderia transformar-se num relato enfadonho. Não é nem demasiado exaustiva nem demasiado superficial e possui detalhes e observações relevantes que não exaltam em demasia a sua opinião pessoal.

Apesar de já saber o destino do navio Essex e ter uma ideia das provações da sua tripulação após o naufrágio, o autor leva-nos numa viagem de resistência e sobrevivência, que demonstra os extremos a que o ser humano pode ir e que deixa o leitor siderado. No Coração do Mar é relatado num tom jornalístico, sem grandes floreados, que se adequa na perfeição à história que quer contar; a pesquisa feita pelo autor é notável e está documentada de forma bastante detalhada. Para isso, provavelmente contribuiu o facto de Nathaniel Philbrick ser também ele um marinheiro, com vasto historial no jornalismo náutico, e de ser claramente alguém que é apaixonado pelo assunto e sabe do que fala.

Durante os poucos dias que esta leitura me tomou, vivi um pouco com aquela tripulação e passei um pouco das suas privações. Aprendi muito, fiquei mais rica. Tive vontade de ler mais livros de não-ficção, para conhecer mais do que foi e é este mundo em que vivo. Foi um dos poucos livros a que atribuí a nota máxima em 2015 e, por isso, não posso deixar de o recomendar.

n  Já não recuava, o Essex agora afundava-se. A baleia, tendo humilhado o seu estranho adversário, libertou-se dos pedaços de madeira estilhaçados do casco revestido a cobre e nadou para sotavento, para nunca mais ser vista.n

One of most the most gruesome books I've ever read. Astonishingly beautiful. Please read it.

Six stars, loved it.

I only read this because I just finished moby dick and this incident was mentioned in that book. I actually enjoyed this much more than moby dick. Very early in the book the author mentions that Nantucket wives with long absent husbands, at sea for up to three years on whaling voyages, kept plaster dildos they called a “he’s home” and micro dosed opium every morning, right then I knew this book would pull no punches.

And it did not. I’ve never physically recoiled while reading a book so much. The account of their whale attack, subsequent sinking and months at sea are described in agonizing detail, including how they butchered the bodies of shipmates when they eventually resorted to cannibalism.

I was reminded of a book I read recently about Shackleton’s Ill fated Antarctic expedition, but while that was a tale of the true heroism of a great leader, the triumph of the human spirit and the deliciousness of penguins, this was a horrific tragedy that seemed brought on largely by bad management. Ironically they deliberately avoided the closest islands because they were worried about the cannibal tribes living there. foreshadow much?

I knew that this was an inspiration for moby dick but I didn’t realize that Herman Melville actually went to Nantucket to meet with the former captain of the Essex and had met with other survivors at different times.

One thing that really struck me about this story is how young the sailors were, the captain himself was only 28 and the youngest crewman was only 14,
I guess people grew up faster in the 19th century.

I won’t get this one out of my head for quite awhile.

Update: just watched the movie version of this. It was decent, they weren’t very fair to the captain, tried to make him look like a bit of a villain when he clearly wasn’t in the book. There were a bunch of other big changes as well, not a bad film but I enjoyed the book way more.

En el programa de Gabinete de Curiosidades - 19 - En el corazón del mar hablo en más detalle de este libro: https://go.ivoox.com/rf/128133745

Algo tiene el mar que, sin ser yo amante de la playa -citando a Anakin, [la arena] es tosca y se mete por doquier-, me seduce hasta tal punto que no me importaría la vida como un farero en un islote abandonado en alta mar, solo con mis libros y rodeado de frailecillos, o un intrépido pescador en el mar del Norte. Luego recuerdo que me mareo solo con tomar una curva cerrada con el coche y que el olor a pescado me repugna. O sea, que soy un urbanita melindroso. Por eso leo libros sobre navegación, sobre la vida en alta mar, sobre aventuras marineras en aguas desconocidas pobladas de misterios y bestias aún no descritas por los naturalistas, esas historias en las que es necesario tener un diccionario náutico para comprender que la complejidad de maniobrar un barco comenzaba en el momento en que había que dar nombre propio a cada cabo, aparejo, vela y compartimento de la nave. Por eso, y porque quiero estar preparado por si algún día tengo que luchar contra una ballena, me he leído En el corazón del mar.

En el corazón del mar no es una novela, aunque si que cuenta un suceso que, grosso modo, se transformó en una de las grandes novelas norteamericanas de todos los tiempos: Moby Dick. Este libro es un relato pormenorizado, partiendo de los diarios y memorias de los supervivientes, del naufragio del ballenero Essex, que en 1890 partiera de la isla de Nuntacket rumbo al Océano Pacífico para llenar su bodega con más de una tonelada de aceite de ballena, de cachalote, para más señas, y fue hundido en alta mar, a más de 3700 de tierra firme, por la arremetida justiciera del cetáceo al que iban a arponear, dejando a toda la tripulación a la deriva, sin agua ni víveres suficientes, sobre tres balleneras con vías en el casco, durante noventa y cinco días completos. Un suceso trágico y luctuoso que se volvió tan famoso entonces que todos los escritores del momento diseñaron los tropos del género náutico de terror realista tomando de referencia lo acontecido a bordo de esas tres precarias balleneras, a saber, el hombre contra el mar, infinito, voluble, indiferente, la inanición, la sed, el canibalismo, etc. A excepción del motín de la Bounty, quizá esta sea la tragedia marinera más famosa y mejor documentada.

Pero este libro no solo cuenta la historia del Essex. Sus pretensiones van mucho más allá de recopilar y narrar las vicisitudes del ya por sí conocido itinerario. Nathaniel Philbrick convierte el relato en un ensayo con todas las de la ley sobre la caza de la ballena en el siglo XIX, centrándose por la que, en aquel entonces, ostentaba el honor de ser el centro neurálgico de la industria que mantuvo iluminadas calles y viviendas durante casi la totalidad del siglo XIX: Nantucket. El autor nos habla de su fundación, su esplendor y decadencia, dejando mucho espacio también a las victimas de esta historia, es decir, los cachalotes, esos gigantescos delfines que viven a grandes profundidades alimentándose de calamares gigantes y que, por suerte para ellos y para nuestros olfatos, pueden volver a nadar casi en paz en los océanos.

¿El petróleo y la luz eléctrica salvaron a los cachalotes de la extinción? Vaya si lo hicieron.

Como conclusión, si os gustan las grandes épicas marineras, si os interesa el periodo histórico en que se navegaba a vela y circunnavegar el globo era aún una gesta y no un oficio rutinario, y si sois amantes de los animales y queréis saber más de esas magníficas criaturas que son los cetáceos, y no sois remilgados, no lo dudéis, leed este brillante ensayo de Nathaniel Philbrick.

O esperaos a que haga un programa hablando del libro y ya os lo cuento yo.

WAY more exciting than I expected! Nathaniel Philbrick knows how to resurrect history into a living, breathing present, a present filled with tension and full-immersion.

If you have any interest in whaling, the age of sail, and shipwrecks, you'll not do better than In the Heart of the Sea. It's very much like the non-fiction version of Moby Dick, made all the more intense for being the real deal.

In fact, the historic event depicted in this book is the basis for Melville's story. Philbrick gives you many of the same whale facts as appear in Moby Dick but in a smaller, more manageable amount. Because this is non-fiction you expect facts and dates and text booky et ceteras. They don't sneak up on you like they do in Moby Dick, where readers joyously enjoying a romping whale of a tale are suddenly stove in and sunk by a lengthy treatise on whale and whaling facts.

Also, Philbrick just knows how to entertain. I even enjoyed his book on the Pilgrims...THE PILGRIMS, for the love of god! Even dull history comes alive in his hands. Frankly I'd rather read In the Heart... again a half dozen more times than read Melville's mammoth once more.

NOTE ON THE MOVIE VERSION
Little Opie from Mayberry directed the movie version of this book and did a fair job. Thor and Catelyn Stark are in it and they're all right. Actually, there's a ton of familiar faces in this one. Anyhow, the movie stays mostly faithful to the book and the true events as they happened. A few tweaks were made, no doubt for dramatic effect. Some of the actors' "Boston" accents are most successful than others. But honestly, I just went to see it because I was in the mood for a good, solid adventure flick. That it's based on a true story is always a plus. All the same, I'd stick with the book. Or, if you want to get all the facts straight (as straight as recorded history can provide) after seeing the movie, you should definitely give Philbrick's book a read.

4.5 Stars for In the Heart of the Sea (audiobook) by Nathaniel Philbrick read by Scott Brick.

The author does a wonderful job of setting the stage to this utter tragedy. He explains what life was like in Nantucket in 1820 and then gives an overview of whaling. Then everything that led up to the sinking of the Essex. Then main part of the story is the suffering of these poor men. It’s really amazing that anyone survived this ordeal. For me the most fascinating part is that this appears to be the inspiration for Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Such a great story came from this battle for survival.