Charles Ramsdell

Charles Ramsdell served as a Captain aboard the ship "General Jackson" sometime in the 1840's. Charles is very likely the young seaman recently immortalized by the book "The Heart of the Sea" which chronicles the sinking of the whaler "Essex" in 1819 and the subsequent trials of it's crew.

"For Pollard and Ramsdell, it was the bones -- gifts from the men they had known and loved -- that became their obsession," writes Philbrick. "They stuffed their pockets with finger bones; they sucked the sweet marrow from the splintered ribs and thighs."

For shipwrecked sailors, cannibalism in the face of certain starvation was an awful but accepted act. The survivors of the Essex spoke openly of it from the day they were rescued. But Philbrick lets us glimpse the psychic toll that lingered after the men returned to Nantucket. "They had all suffered terribly, but it was Pollard and Ramsdell -- found clutching the bones of their dead companions -- who had come the closest to complete psychic disintegration. (More)

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