This turned out to be a bizarre find. This song is reported to be about a sailor named Owen Coffin. I never heard this story before, but it is quite morbid.
This is from Wiki:
“Owen Coffin (August 24, 1802 – February 2, 1821) was a teen-aged sailor aboard the Nantucket whaleship Essex when it set sail for the Pacific Ocean on a sperm whale-hunting expedition in August 1819, under the command of his cousin, George Pollard, Jr. In November the next year, a whale rammed and stove in the hull of the Essex in mid-Pacific, and the ship sank steadily.
The crew of the Essex escaped in small whaleboats, with sufficient supplies for two months, but were not rescued in that time. During January 1821, the near-starved survivors began to eat the bodies of those who died. When even this resource ran out, the four men remaining in Pollard’s boat agreed to draw straws to decide which of them should be slaughtered, lest all four die of starvation. Coffin ‘lost’ the lottery, and was shot and eaten. The captain volunteered to take his place but Coffin refused, saying it was his ‘right’ to do so that the others might live.”
Now I don’t know how much of the story is fact or fiction, but further reading tells that Owen was Pollard’s nephew and he refused to eat the meat. The irony of it all is that one of the thee remaining sailors died a few days later. Makes you wonder if Owen’s sacrifice was for not. What a horrid tragedy.
From 1971 Mountain’s Nantucket Sleighride:
