Two Brothers

In 2008, archaeologists discovered a large anchor in the shallow waters of French Frigate Shoal in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands.  All indications now are that the anchor is a link to a remarkable historical chapter, one that helped give rise to one of our greatest literary works. 

In 1820, the whaleship Essex, out of Nantucket and captained by George Pollard, Jr., was stove in by an enraged sperm whale and sank.  If the story sounds familiar, it should - it became the foundation for Herman Melville's Moby Dick.  Of course, Melville's Ishmael was picked up by the Rachel the day after Captain Ahab's Pequod went down. The survivors of the Essex disaster were not so lucky.  The drifted in their whaleboats for three months, reduced to drawing lots to determine who would survive and who would be cannibalized.  Captain Pollard himself helped execute, and eat, his own nephew.  Their trial by ocean is the subject of another truly great book, In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick.

After the Essex survivors eventual rescue, Pollard was granted another captaincy, this time on the Two Brothers.  His luck, however, had not improved.  In 1823, the Two Brothers struck a reef in the Hawaiian Islands and went down.  The crew survived, but Pollard's career ended.  He spent the rest of his days as a night watchman in Nantucket.

It is the anchor of the Two Brothers that was spotted in French Frigate Shoals in 2008.  The find has now been extensively investigated, and is the subject of this piece at National Geographic.  It's not biology, but it's pretty good stuff.