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VIA RELAXANDRELEASE

Since we just talked about unlucky people on board a ship. Here I have someone who has really leased the bad luck. Captain George Pollard Jr. was first captain on the infamous Whaler Essex, which was first rammed twice by a Sperm Whale and then sank.

Pollard were in poor mental health (dissociative) after 93 days at sea in the whaleboat. They were transferred to Two Brothers another whaler which was heading to Valparaíso, Chile.

The whaleship “Essex” leaves Nantucket, August 12th, 1819, by A.D. Blake (x)

After recovering, he actually became captain of a ship again, of the previously named Two Brothers, he was joined by Thomas Nickerson Essex former cabin boy and now boatswain. She set sail for the Pacific in November 1821, where she remained until February 1823.

Two Brothers illustration, by James Abundis (x)

On the 11th of the month she was caught in a storm together with the Martha, another whaler. Both ships tried to stay within sight of each other, but lost each other during the night. Soon the Two Brothers ran aground and sank on a reef near French Frigate Shoals. Captain Pollard did not want to abandon ship, but his crew pleaded with him, and they clung to small boats through the night. The next morning they were rescued by Martha. Pollard’s reputation was already tarnished because of the cannibalism that had set in after the Essex incident and the fact that Pollard’s mental health was not the best, which the Two Brothers incident may have reinforced. He gave up his career, made only one more trip with a merchant vessel and then became a night watchman on Nantucket, until he died in 1870.

The wrack of the Two Brothers was found in 2008.

One of Two Brothers anchors (x)

Barquentine Antigua and Barque Europa in the Arctic and Antarctic, by Jan Erik Waider