I wondered how ;much the editors had prettied up the prose of a simple seaman. I found a
paragraph about him by Nantucket Historical Assn, with a picture of him very well dressed
and looking as though his prose needed no prettying. The paragraph says something I think
is very much in error. It says Owen Chase made a serious bluncer in plan to sail east to
South American coast, instead of Tahiti, which it says was much closer.
A look at the map shows that Tahiti was almost the same distance;, and in his narrative
Chase discusses the necessity of finding favorable winds, which meant sailing south, then east.

http://www.pbs.org/odyssey/class/essex_photo_05.html

Dear tsuwm - nice piece of detective work on "enditalic"