In the Heart of the Sea: The Epic True Story that Inspired Moby-Dick

3.7 stars. Interesting to me because it was the story that inspired Moby-Dick.

MOBY-DICK is one of my favorite books, so I'm ashamed that it took me so long to read IN THE HEART OF THE SEA, the inspiration for Melville's classic and the true tale of the Essex's sinking by an angry sperm whale. I'm a sucker for historical nonfiction, especially when it concerns an event I have a little preexisting knowledge of. That said, never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that the "great American novel" was based on a tale of such brutal survival and sheer terror.

Nathaniel Philbrick does an incredible job of bringing the story of the Essex's crew to life with liveliness and exquisite detail. Every consideration and moment of exhaustion, every nook and cranny of the ship and its contents, every emotion is fully felt through the author's precise research. IN THE HEART OF THE SEA is a book about the bold arrogance of man in early America, of our young nation's obsession with wealth and prominence, and of our unencumbered search for things farther, more dangerous, and a boldness of spirit that seems lost to time. The suffering endured by these whaling men of the sea is only matched by the sheer cruelty they inflicted upon the gentle giants below the waves—that is, until one ornery whale decided to fight back, and in turn, set forth the events that would forever change the island of Nantucket and inspired a future novel that would come to be known as one of literature's greatest triumphs.

A must-read for fans of MOBY-DICK, adventures on the early seas, and of nature's wrath and man's singular mixture of egotism and bravery.

I just finished In the Heart of the Sea - The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, and give it 5 stars.

I am currently reading Moby Dick and wanted to read this story about the Essex since Herman Melville based a lot of Moby Dick on this this tragic story.

The Essex was a Nantucket whaleship that was rammed and sunk by a large sperm whale in the Pacific Ocean on November 20, 1820. The entire story of the voyage of the Essex , and the struggles of the crew to survive is so wild that it is almost too hard to believe that it is a true story.

While I felt badly for the entire crew for what they all had to go through after the whale attack, the Captain, George Pollard, Jr., the first mate, Owen Chase, and the Cabin Boy, Thomas Nickerson, were really brought to life in this story, and I felt I understood them better as human beings after reading this book.

This book and Moby Dick have shown me how dangerous the whaling industry in the early 19th century truly was, and it definitely took a special type of person (brave, crazy?) to be willing to sign up for a whaling voyage. Philbrick also provides an overarching history of Nantucket and the whaling industry which I found interesting and informative without getting bogged down in too many details.

The author summed up this wild and shocking story on page 236 pretty nicely: "The Essex disaster is not a tale of adventure. It is a tragedy that happens to be one of the greatest true stories ever told." I wholeheartedly agree!

Nathaniel Philbrick has a way of making history accessible and entertaining, almost unlike any other history authors I've read. I also appreciate how he keeps his writing "pithy", and constantly on point.

I recommend In the Heart of the Sea if you have read or plan to read Moby Dick, or if you just want to read a thrilling, gritty, true, story of human survival.

In the process of telling the story of the whaleship Essex and its crew, Philbrick reveals the mindset of the 19th century whaling industry, which can so easily be extrapolated to the rest of the country. Whales, buffaloes, cod, tortoises, trees.............if you could kill it, cut it, sell it, you were doing God's work. What now seems so disturbing makes so much sense in the context of the times. Even though I love Melville's Moby Dick with a passionate intensity, the realism of its narrative never quite convinced me. I always knew it was fiction, even though based on Melville's seafaring experiences.

Now I know better. Philbrick brings everything viscerally to life. The specifics of harpooning a whale, its death throes, its butchering, and finally the cooking of its oil in try pots make up only a small part of the narrative. As important as these details are to understanding the "art" of whaling, they're not nearly as gripping as the story of the men on the ship and their relationships with each other. When the Essex is stove by an 85-foot sperm whale in the middle of a vast blank endless ocean, I couldn't put the book down.

Twenty men in three small whale boats attempt to make their way to South America. Their psychological and physical disintegration is fascinating to follow. After the "'cotton-mouth phase'" of thirst, and the tongue and throat pains associated with it, came the "agonies of a mouth that has ceased to generate saliva. [. . . ] Next is the 'blood sweats' phase, involving ' a progressive mummifcation of the initially living body.' The tongue swells to such proportions that it squeezes past the jaws. The eyelids crack and the eyeballs begin to weep tears of blood." This is the "living death." Philbrick smoothly weaves in the stories of other starving men, other survivors, additional studies, and previous shipwrecks, to deepen the reader's understanding of what must have occurred to the crew of the Essex. The survivors left their written accounts, but Philbrick's book goes further by putting their tragedy in larger context.

Nantucket - and its whaling industry - is a case study. The 19th century's dependence on clear burning whale oil made the island rich for a short time. To the Nantucketers it probably felt like a permanent condition, but then the ships got bigger and the deeper harbors (Sag, New Bedford) took much of their business. (And, as an aside, "an increasing number of sperm whales were fighting back). Then, holy moly, Edwin Drake "struck oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859." So long whale oil.

Eye-opening: "Nantucketers and their Yankee whale-killing brethren harvested more than 225,000 sperm whales between 1804 and 1876. In 1837, the best year in the century for killing whales, 6767 sperm whales were taken by American whalemen." BUT before you direct disgust at the 19th century know that "in 1964, the peak year of modern whaling, 29,255 sperm whales were killed."

I found everything about this book interesting, but the psychological aspects of surviving 93 days at sea is what I found most compelling. By the time the men begin to eat the bodies of their shipmates, you have to admire how long they'd lasted on the crumbs of ruined hardtack.

I was kind of rooting for the whale.


Though little-known today, the tragedy of the whaleship Essex was one of the major seagoing disasters of the 19th century and apparently was circulated far and wide. It was commonly featured in schoolbooks, so most children in America growing up in the generations that followed would have heard of it.

Today, we know of it mostly indirectly, because it inspired Herman Melville’s famous novel Moby Dick. Melville actually interviewed some of the survivors and read all their accounts and based many of the incidents in his novel on the tragedy of the Essex.

The Essex was a whaleship out of Nantucket, and this book describes a great deal about the whaling community on that island, made up mostly of Quakers whose religious beliefs were a mixture of pride, ethics, judgementalism, and avarice. Class and race was a factor on the whaling ships - white sailors naturally were treated better than blacks, though the treatment of African American crewmen on Quaker whaling ships was still probably better than most other places at the time. (The Quakers were against slavery from the beginning.) Being from an established Nantucket whaling family put you on a rung above any “outsiders.” Most of the whalers had grown up on Nantucket and had whaling in their blood, knowing from the time they were small boys that they’d be going out to sea to hunt the great beasts that made Nantucket wealthy.

This was dangerous work. First of all, any sea voyage in 1820 was dangerous. The whalers had already started depleting nearby whale hunting grounds, and had to go further and further to fill their holds with whale oil. The Essex expected to be gone for one or two years or more.

Their quarry, the sperm whale, the largest carnivore on Earth, was much larger at that time. Biologists believe that extensive hunting removed the largest whales from the gene pool, so today an adult bull sperm whale rarely exceeds 65 feet, but the one that did in the Essex was estimated to be 85 feet, a size that was large but not spectacular at that time. The whalers had to find the whales, then set out in little whaleboats, row up beside the whale, and throw a harpoon into it. This didn’t kill the whale - it just sent it fleeing in pain and terror, with the whaleboat dragging behind it. Eventually it would tire out, and then the whalers could pull up alongside the exhausted beast and stab it with lances, trying to find the fatal spot. Often they would have to stab it many times.

If this sounds messy, bloody, and disturbing, it is. Philbrick describes the process, which was related by many whalers. It’s pretty gruesome, and horrible for the whale, and when you think about how magnificent these creatures are, how we nearly hunted them to extinction (sperm whales now are no longer endangered, but many other species are), and how we butchered them for oil, harvesting them the way we now harvest oil from the ground, with as little thought to long term consequences… it is sad and you don’t have to be a Greenpeace or PETA supporter to find that your sympathies are with the whales.

You might be surprised how rarely the whales fought back. If they were intelligent enough to recognize the danger, they could easily smash the whaleboats chasing them, but at least in 1820, they didn’t often seem to recognize the threat, and when a whale smashed a boat with a slap of its tail or by emerging beneath it, it was more likely to be an accident than a deliberate attack.

For a whale to attack a ship was unheard of. So when a huge bull rammed the Essex, it understandably caused panic throughout the whaling community. What if the whales were finally fighting back?

(In fact, in the years that followed, Philbrick tells us that there were several more accounts of sperm whales attacking boats and even sinking ships, but it was still pretty rare - the whales certainly were not communicating or planning organized resistance, as appealing as that idea might be.)

The whale that attacked the Essex was about a third the size of the ship. A newer, sturdier ship would probably have withstood the assault - the whale was apparently dazed after smashing into the Essex, but then came at it again. It was big enough to smash in the side, and it happened to hit it broadside exactly at its most vulnerable point. The sailors abandoned ship and then spent months aboard their boats, trying to make for South America in an ill-planned course that only a few survived.

The crew made many mistakes. They could have reached Tahiti safely, but were afraid to do so because of lurid tales they’d heard of headhunting cannibals who would sodomize captives before killing and eating them. So instead they tried to reach South America, 3000 miles away. Their boats were separated, and in the end, they were forced to resort to cannibalism, and even drew lots to choose which survivor would be killed to feed the others. Eight survivors were eventually rescued by another whaling ship. Amazingly, all eight of them soon went to sea again. What else were they going to do?

This is not the first book about the Essex - Nathaniel Philbrick’s biography and citations are extensive. There were many accounts written after the disaster, including at least two by the survivors. But one of those accounts was unknown until the 20th century.

The First Mate of the Essex, Owen Chase, wrote his own account after returning to Nantucket. He of course glosses over any mistakes he made (like talking the captain out of setting out for Tahiti instead of South America, or not harpooning the whale when he had a chance), and casts himself as the hero of the tale. This was the account largely accepted as fact, and used by Melville as the basis for Moby Dick.

Over a hundred years later, in 1960, an account written by the Essex’s cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson, was uncovered and published. Nickerson is less complimentary about Owen Chase, and gives a different view of what life aboard the Essex was like, from the perspective of a junior crewmember.

In the Heart of the Sea is a great, dramatic account of one of those incredible survival tales that make you thrill at the obstacles faced by men at sea, while hoping you never have to go through anything like that. It’s also thoroughly researched, and will educate you about whales, whaling, and the history of early American maritime communities, as well as a full account of what happened to the Essex and their men.

I’m still rooting for the whales, though.

OMG THIS IS BECOMING A MOVIE OMG OMG OMG I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW

A phenomenal telling of the disaster at sea, that spurred Herman Melville to write Moby Dick,In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick is exceptional. Philbrick takes us inside the tragedy with painstaking care and newly discovered research. He describes hour to hour what happened on the ill-fated voyage. This is my favorite type of historical writing. It never feels stodgy or stilted. You feel like you are there suffering along with the crew. Ultimately, it is a tale of the optimism of the human spirit and our ability to overcome heinous circumstances.

There She Blows!


One of the best non-fiction books I have read in a long time.