Some time afterward Commodore Biddle visited Yeddo for the purpose of establishing trade relations with the Japanese. MacDonald and the survivors of the two wrecked whale ships were committed to the Commodore’s charge with the warning never to return. The stories told by these whalemen, and the information gained by Biddle, determined our government to send another expedition under Commodore Perry, with results so well known to the world. In the dogwatch the _Lady Adams_, the _Lawrence and_ Ronald MacDonald were much talked about. A couple of our men had sailed in vessels that had cruised within a few years off the coast of Japan, but they said they had never known a boat to land on the coast, and so far as they knew a few whalers only had recruited at Hakodate, a port to which vessels might go. There was something mysterious about the quarter of the world we were approaching, and the uncertainty colored our conversation in the dogwatch. Shipwrecks and other disasters at sea were also brought up, and the more terrible the tales, the greater the interest. “Suppose anything happened to us off the coast of Japan. What should we do?” said one of the men. “It might be another case like the _Essex_,” replied Kreelman. There was a demand for the tale of the _Essex_. While I had read all about that ill-fated vessel, I was anxious to hear Kreelman’s version. “In the year 1820,” he began, “the ship _Essex_ of Nantucket, Captain Pollard, was cruisin’ in this very Pacific Ocean when whales was sighted. The first whale they struck stove the boat. Two other boats was soon fast to another whale, and the ship headed towards them. All of a sudden a big sperm bull breached nearby and bore down on the ship at full speed and struck her with tremendous force and she begun to sink. The whale moved off, and then he come back, openin’ and closin’ his big jaws and poundin’ the sea with his flukes and dashed into her again; and pretty soon she was on her beam ends. Owen Chase, the mate of the _Essex_, writ a book in which he said that there wasn’t no such thing as chance about it, that the whale was mad because they had struck his companions and that he meant revenge. In three boats captain, officers and crew made for Peru, which was nearly three thousand miles away. They at first reached an island where nobody lived, and three of them preferred to die there rather than go through what the men would have to go through who were to go on in the open boats. One boat was never heard from. When one of them gave up and died the others ate his raw flesh like wolves. At last they were rescued. Three in one boat was picked up by one ship, and two in the other boat by another ship. Captain Pollard was one of the men that was saved. Word got round to Nantucket, before his return, of the awful time he and his shipmates had had, and when he come back the streets was lined with people, and not a word was said as he walked with bowed head to his home.”