Thomas Nickerson was a fourteen-year-old cabin boy on the Essex, who wrote an account of the ship's sinking and the three months that the crew survived at sea.

Overview

Born on the island

Island

An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...

 of Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, Nickerson made his first sea voyage in 1819, at the age of fourteen, on the ill-fated whaler, Essex. When the ship was struck by a whale on November 20, he joined the boat of the first mate, Owen Chase

Owen Chase

Owen Chase was First Mate of the whale ship Essex, that was struck and sunk by a sperm whale on November 20, 1820. Chase wrote about the incident in Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex...

, who later wrote about the incident in the Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex, the book that would inspire Herman Melville

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....

 to write Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...

.

Nickerson returned to sea after his rescue, serving on other whale ships and eventually working his way up to captain of a merchant vessel. Upon retiring he ran a boarding house in Nantucket, which was visited by the writer Leon Lewis, who encouraged him to write down his story of the three months he was lost at sea with the Essex survivors. Nickerson did this, and in 1876, he sent the manuscript, as well as accounts of other adventures he had later in life, to Lewis for editing. Lewis, however, was having a personal crisis, and the manuscript was abandoned. When Lewis journeyed to England, he left the manuscript with friends in Connecticut

Connecticut

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

, where it was forgotten.

Nickerson died in 1883, but it was only in 1960 that his unedited manuscript The Loss of the Ship "Essex" Sunk by a Whale and the Ordeal of the Crew in Open Boats

The Loss of the Ship "Essex" Sunk by a Whale and the Ordeal of the Crew in Open Boats

The Loss of the Ship "Essex" Sunk by a Whale and the Ordeal of the Crew in Open Boats is an unedited manuscript by Thomas Nickerson that was posthumously published in 1984 by the Nantucket Historical Society, over one hundred years after Nickerson had died....

was discovered. It took another twenty years before it was authenticated by Edouard A. Stackpole

Edouard A. Stackpole

Edouard A. Stackpole was an American author and descendant of a family of whalers. Born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, he graduated from Roxbury Latin School in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. He worked for several years as a printer, reporter and editor at newspapers in Nantucket.Stackpole was...

; an abridged version was published by the Nantucket Historical Association in 1984, a century after Nickerson's death.