Literary Origins

"Mutiny and Atrocious Butchery":

The Globe Mutiny as a Source for Pym

Susan F. Beegel

"Mutiny and atrocious butchery," promises the title page of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, cataloguing the delectable horrors within, and the novel delivers an uprising so gory that, like many another episode in Edgar Allan Poe's works, it easily seems the nightmarish fantasy of a diseased mind. Perhaps that is why scholars have so long overlooked the many similarities between the fictional mutiny on Poe's Nantucket whaleship Grampus and a historic event that Alexander Starbuck has called "the most horrible mutiny that is recounted in the annals of the whale-fishery from any port or nation"—the mutiny on board the Nantucket whaleship Globe. Yet if we explore the actual events of the Globe mutiny, Poe's probable knowledge of those events, and his indebtedness to them, we find that Pym's "mutiny and atrocious butchery" owe more to reportorial accuracy than to a sanguinary imagination run amok, and we are reminded once again that until we know all of the sources for a given work of fiction, we cannot begin to appreciate the nature of its author's powers of invention.

Mutiny on the Whaleship Globe

A brief recounting of the facts of the Globe mutiny helps us to understand both the event's notoriety in nineteenth-century America and the ways in which Poe may have interacted with its history. On 15 December 1822, the Nantucket whaleship Globe set sail for the Pacific Ocean from Edgartown, on Martha's Vineyard. Over one year later, as the vessel was cruising off Hawaii in January 1824, a psychotic boatsteerer named Samuel Comstock led four new hands, taken from Oahu's beaches, in the bloodiest and most famous mutiny ever to afflict Nantucket's whaling fleet. Just before the midnight watch, Comstock led his conspirators into the Globe 's cabin and murdered Captain Thomas Worth, asleep in his hammock, with an axe blow that nearly split his head in two. At the same time, another conspirator, Silas Payne, entered first mate William Beetle's stateroom and hacked him to death with a boarding knife.

The second and third mates took alarm and barricaded themselves in another stateroom. Comstock wounded one of these men by firing a musket through the stateroom door and then had his fellow mutineers smash their way in. After a brief struggle, Comstock persuaded the wounded mate to give up the musket he had snatched and then treacherously shot him in the head. The other mate Comstock repeatedly bayoneted through the body. A fifth officer, Gilbert Smith, survived the mayhem by escaping to the forecastle, where he was sheltered by frightened crew members.

After the mutilated bodies of the dead and dying officers had been thrown overboard, Comstock began to suspect one of his men, a black steward named William Humphries, of conspiring against him. Humphries had been seen loading a pistol in the galley. Although he insisted that he wanted the pistol for defense against a countermutiny being plotted by Gilbert Smith, Humphries was found guilty of mutiny by Comstock and a "court" of his coconspirators. With unconscious irony, the mutineers hanged Humphries from the yardarm for his crime.

For the next several days, the Globe sailed nearly due west. According to historian Edouard Stackpole: "Comstock planned to reach some island, away from the usual cruisings of other whaleships, land and establish himself as the virtual king. He would then burn the ship, destroying the evidence of her identity and the mutiny. In his calculated, cruel plans, he no doubt had considered ways of killing most of the faithful men." In a chain of small islands known to the natives as Mili and to English navigators as the Mulgraves, Comstock believed he had found a safe harbor for the fulfillment of his plans. Here he ordered the Globe anchored and the ship's supplies unloaded by intimidated crew members.

Comstock's reign as king of Mili was short-lived. The mutineers incensed the native population by using the men as pack animals and the women as concubines. Frightened by the growing numbers of angry natives around the whalemen's camp and believing that Comstock was conspiring with the islanders to kill the crew, mutineer Silas Payne shot Comstock in the back and beheaded him with an axe. Next, Gilbert Smith and five crew members who had been sent on board for supplies escaped Mili with the Globe, setting sail for Valparaiso on a dark night. Tragically, their flight marooned six loyal crew members on Mili with the three surviving mutineers, and the ship's departure triggered the native massacre Payne had feared. The population of Mili attacked the whalemen with spears and rocks, surrounding them and "mascerating [sic] their heads with large stones."

Only two members of the Globe's crew stranded on Mili were spared: William Lay of Saybrook, Connecticut, and Cyrus Hussey of Nantucket, both aged eighteen. Yet despite Gilbert Smith's prompt reporting of the Globe mutiny on his 7 June 1824 arrival in Valparaiso, Lay and Hussey were fated to remain on Mili for another seventeen months as slaves of the natives who had spared them. Sparse U.S. naval presence in the Pacific prevented the dispatch of a rescue mission until late in 1825, when an appeal by Nantucket merchants to the Secretary of the Navy prompted the sending of the schooner Dolphin to Mili to search for survivors and bring the mutineers to justice. In November 1825, a shore party commanded by Lieutenant Hiram Paulding finally located Lay and Hussey and took them from hostile natives. After a prolonged cruise with the Dolphin, the young men were returned home on board the frigate United States, reaching New York on 21 April 1827, five years after the ill-fated Globe had set sail from Edgartown.

Poe's Familiarity with the Globe Mutiny

Poe may have become familiar with the Globe mutiny because of its general notoriety, as a result of his friendship with maritime explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds, or through an acquaintance with one...