Owen Chase (October 7, 1797 – March 7, 1869) was first mate of the whaler Essex, which sank in the Pacific Ocean on November 20, 1820, after being rammed by a sperm whale.

Soon after his return to Nantucket, Chase wrote an account of the shipwreck and the attempts of the crew to reach land in small boats.

The book, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex, was published in 1821 and would inspire Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick.

On the morning of November 20, 1820, a sperm whale (said to be around 85 feet; 26 m) twice rammed Essex, sinking her 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) west of South America.

[2] Along with three other survivors of Essex, Chase returned to Nantucket on Eagle on June 11, 1821, to find he had a 14-month-old daughter he had never seen named Phoebe.

[3] Within four months and with the help of a ghostwriter, he completed an account of the disaster, the Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex; this was used by Herman Melville as one of the inspirations for his novel Moby-Dick.

Herman Melville wrote of the news in his copy of Chase's narrative:"For, while I was in the Acushnet we heard from some whaleship that we spoke, that the captain of the "Charles Carrol" - that is Owen Chase - had recently received letters from home, informing him of the certain infidelity of his wife, the mother of several children, one of them being the lad of sixteen, whom I alluded to as giving me a copy of his father's narrative to read.

The Charles Carrol docked at Holmes Hole on February 15, 1840, where Chase left the ship and traveled to Nantucket.

Later in his life, Chase began hiding food in the attic of his Nantucket house on Orange Street and was eventually institutionalized.