The Match that Killed all the Turtles: The Galapagos versus Massachusetts
In the long, tragic, and still-ongoing tale of human influence on wildlife, no other story seems so unfair and tragic then that of the ill-fated Floreana Island, and what occurred in the Summer of 1820.
While on their way to a then-mostly untapped expanse of ocean in which the whales were said to roam a plenty, the crew of the Nantucket whaling ship Essex severely misjudged how funny a prank was going to be. With one lit match, the sailors managed to set the entire island aflame, killing scores of wildlife and leaving the island virtually uninhabitable for wildlife, before they themselves were summarily attacked and sunk by a giant whale.
Off the coast of Ecuador, making up one of the land masses known in popular culture as the beautiful Galapagos Islands, Floreana sits at the southernmost tip of the archipelago, beat out only by her sister, Isla Española. Once the Ecuadorian government regained jurisdiction of the Galapagos, the flat expanse of land was named in homage to the first president of Ecuador, Juan Jose Flores, and turned into a penal colony.
But in the late 1700’s, Floreana was rebranded by the earnest colonizers into Charles Island after King Charles II of England, naturally. The island was mostly used as a makeshift post office where Nantucket whalers could pick up mail to be returned home to loved ones and families.
Besides being a glorified tropical mailbox, however, Floreana was also well frequented by sailors because of its prized possession — the delicious meat of Saddleback Giant Tortoises, whose numbers flourished in the archipelago. And that’s exactly what the crew of he Essex had in mind upon landing in October, 1820.
The Essex Catches Some Turtles
According to author Nathaniel Philbrick in his novel In the Heart of the Sea, the crew of the Essex collected a whopping two-hundred and eighty tortoises on both Floreana and Española (called Hood Island at the time), which they would stack on top of each other in the hold of the ship and starve them so drastically that the tortoises were constantly licking everything they encountered on the ship’s deck. Their starvation would only end when it was time for the slaughter. Thomas Nickerson, the Essex’s cabin boy at the time and who’d written a memoir of the things he’d experienced at sea years later, said this of the animals:
“Many people contend that they [the tortoises] don’t feel the knawings of hunger as other animals do, but of this I cannot be persuaded, for I have observed them when kept in that way, to be constantly moving around the decks tasting of every thing that lay within their reach.”
Nickerson rewards a few words of the report to documenting the various types of wildlife residing on the island, including mockingbirds, pelicans, iguanas, snakes, and of course, the tortoises, which the crewmen would have to spend an inordinate amount of time lugging these enormous animals to the ship. All of this would be irrevocably changed, however,
The Whaling Ship Essex Plays A Prank (NOT funny!)
On October 22nd of 1820, one of the Essex’s boat steerers, named Thomas Chappel, decided to play a prank.
This prank involved sneaking a tinderbox (the 1800’s equivalent of a modern match) onto the island, and, as the crew went about looking for more tortoise meat, Chappel proceeded to start a fire in the underbrush.
To the surprise of probably one person — Chappel himself, most likely — the small flame quickly spread out of control to an uncontrollable blaze. The crew scouring for tortoise meat were effectively cut off from their only route back to the ship, and forced to run through flames in order to get back onto the boat.
The men were furious, embarrassed that one of their own had committed such a careless act that not only could’ve taken the lives of their fellow crew members, but most certainly did kill scores of wildlife and ruined a potential source of food for future sailors. But it was Pollard who was the most upset. “The Captain’s wrath knew no bounds,” Nickerson recants, “swearing vengeance upon the head of the incendiary should he be discovered.” Fearing backlash from the captain and crew, Chappel secreted his role in the fire for a time, only admitting his guilt much later. The crew drifted off from Floreana, and their departure was “backlit by the red glow of a dying island”.
It’s just a prank bro c’mon
When Nickerson revisited the island years later, it was still a burned and blackened husk. Charles Darwin, upon visiting the island fifteen years after its supposed annihilation, found signs of animal and plant life, but due to over-hunting and the act of unprecedented idiocy that was the fire of 1820, both the Floreana tortoise and the Floreana Mockingbird had gone extinct.
The Essex Get their Shit handed to them
In a twist of fate that is Herculean in its impact, within mere weeks of leaving the island, the Essex was rammed and subsequently sunk by an 85-foot sperm whale bull. It would take the crew almost a hundred days before rescue — and in that time, out of the twenty man crew, only eight managed to survive the ordeal.
The others, upon dying of starvation, dehydration, or some other unaddressed health issue, were set upon and cannibalized by the survivors. The sensational tale of the Essex inspired none other than novelist Herman Melville, who would go on to base his serialized account of a vengeful white whale off of the tragedy. Whether or not the sperm whale who sunk the Essex did so out of retribution for its fallen brethren, is up to you.
After the sinking of the Essex, the ship hand who lit the fire — Thomas Chappel — died of plague fever in Timor, Southeast Asia, while working as a missionary some years later. No detailed accounts of his whereabouts after the Essex’s brutal end exist, but one thing is certain — he will be forever known to history as ‘that asshole’.
But, while the crew of the Essex may not be coming back anytime soon, not all is lost; efforts are being made by Yale University researchers to reintroduce Saddleback Tortoises with Floreana ancestry back onto the island in the coming years. The offspring of nineteen turtles, descended from Floreana Saddlebacks, will be released on the island in 2022.
