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