Old Thomas Nickerson: The tragedy of the Essex is the story of men. And a Demon.
Herman Melville: Something else you've given me tonight.
Old Thomas Nickerson: And what's that?
Herman Melville: The courage to go where one does not want to go.
Owen Chase: It's a privilege to know the moment of one's death in advance - be able to prepare for it. Cursed to be so far from home - without a chance to say goodbye, without a chance to make peace; without a chance to settle scores. Then let us at least settle those between us, Captain.
George Pollard: Captain of what?
Owen Chase:
The Essex was lost through no fault of yours. I was as much to blame for...
George Pollard: You are not the captain! But you were born to do this job. I was just born into it.
Owen Chase: What do we do, do you think, George? And what offense did we give God to upset him so?
George Pollard: The only creature to have offended
God here is the whale.
Owen Chase: Not us? In our arrogance, our greed. Look were we find ourselves.
George Pollard: We are supreme creatures made in God's own likeness. Earthly kings, whose business it is to circumnavigate the planet bestowed to us. To bend nature to our will.
Owen Chase: You really feel like an earthly king
after everything that we've been through? We're nothing. We're... we're specks. And dust.
George Pollard: We sail into the sun at dawn. If we are to die, then with God's grace, let us die as men.
[first lines]
Herman Melville: [in his letter] How does one come to know the unknowable? What faculties must a man possess? Since it was discovered that whale oil could light our cities in ways never achieved before, it created global demand. It has pushed man to venture further and further into the deep blue unknown. We know not its depths, nor the host of creatures that
live there. Monsters. Are they real?
[a huge whale passes]
Herman Melville: Or do the stories exist only to make us respect the sea's dark secrets?
Title Card: NANTUCKET ISLAND Massachusetts February 1850
Herman Melville: The question both vexes and excites me, and is the reason I've written you a second time to request a meeting. A
conversation with you, sir, I believe will serve me well for the novel I intend to write, currently entitled: Moby Dick. I hope you will reconsider my offer. The unknown. That is where my imagination yearns to venture. And so the question plagues me still: How does a man come to know the unknowable? Sincerely, Herman Melville.
Thomas Nickerson: My mother's buried up in Smith's hill. There's a stone for my father, too. He was lost at sea before I was born.
Owen Chase: Here, give me that.
[grabs a coil of rope]
Owen Chase: Well, this is your family now, boy. For better or for worse. worse, mostly.
Owen Chase: To return to port without a single barrel of oil would be a mistake, sir. And not behoove a man whose name is Pollard. Or Chase, for that matter. And the best thing for both of us would be to work all hours Gods sends us, fill this ship with oil and be home inside a year and rid of one another as quickly as possible. Trust me, I am every bit as desirous of that as you.
Old Thomas Nickerson: Greed took hold of our captain and first mate. So we headed out. A thousand leagues along the equator. Where knowledge ended, speculation began. That's where the whales had gone to hide. As far from man as they could possibly go. But we hunted them down. Centuries before, sailors feared sailing off the edge of the Earth. But we where headed for the edge of
sanity. Trust gave way to doubt. Hope to blind superstition.
Old Thomas Nickerson: Take the money and leave! The devil's bargain.
Herman Melville: No, sir. The devil loves unspoken secrets. Especially those that fester in a man's soul.
Old Thomas Nickerson: What's yours?