Essex

In one famous case, a whale destroyed an entire ship.

In eighteen twenty, the Essex, a whaling ship from Nantucket, was struck and sunk by an enormous sperm whale in the South Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from land.

Of the twenty crew members who escaped in small whaleboats, only eight survived after a grueling ninety-day ordeal marked by starvation, dehydration, exposure, and ultimately, cannibalism.

The survivors drifted across the Pacific, with some dying on the boats and others resorting to drawing lots to determine who would be sacrificed to feed the rest.

The captain, George Pollard Jr., and First Mate Owen Chase were among the few who returned, and their harrowing accounts of survival shocked the public and left a lasting mark on maritime history.

The journey of the Essex became the basis of the novel Moby-Dick.

Once a whale was dead, the crew would tow it back to the ship and lash alongside it.

Processing the carcass began almost immediately.

That is the actual childhood experience of the author Nathaniel Philbrick.

And that ship was the real life whale ship Essex.

Which is a famous historical event.

It is.

It's that classic adolescent rejection, you know, whatever the parents hold sacred, the kid rejects.

Exactly.

But the seed of that Essex story was planted so deep in his subconscious.

Even as a child, he knew that the giant book on the desk was somehow connected to that nightmare.

But occasionally, one would fight back, and in 1820, one sperm whale did enough damage to become one of the most famous whales in history.

In 1820, the Essex whaling ship operated in the South Pacific when the crew encountered a massive sperm whale, and this time, the whale did not lose.

According to First Mate Owen Chase, the whale first struck the Essex hard enough to seriously damage the ship, then it moved away and came back.

Chase described the second hit as a full-on charge, with the whale driving its massive head directly into the ship.

The damage was catastrophic, and the Essex began to sink, and the crew was forced to abandon ship.

20 men escaped into three small whale boats, and somehow, the whale was only the beginning of their nightmare.

The crew spent months drifting across the Pacific with very little food or water.

One of them was Owen Chase, and a year later, Chase published his account of the disaster.