This very enjoyable book about the shipwreck that prompted Herman Melville to write Moby Dick benefits from the author continually informing the reader with background on topics that come to light during the ordeal.

I learned about ship design, how a whaling ship was crewed, how whales were processed after the kill and many more things that helped me to understand the circumstances and behavior of the men who found themselves alone in three whaleboats in the middle of the Pacific after their ship was attacked by a sperm whale.

It astounds me that the whaleships out of tiny Nantucket Island dominated whaling around the world in the early 19th century. It was not unusual for them to be at sea for two years in pursuit of the whale oil that was the lamp fuel of the time. These ships were about 50 percent longer and 3 times as heavy as Columbus' flagship, the Santa Maria, but considering the whale processing they had to support and the load of oil they had to return with to port, a length of 88 feet isn't much.

The story relates, as you might expect, that humans were rapacious predators who took freely of everything they could get their hands on without thought of the ecology of the places they raided. The crew of the Essex collected as many turtles from the Galapagos Islands as they could carry away and of course their impact through whaling on the population of whales was never a consideration. In another instance they took every bird they could find from an island. Their livelihood was a sea-going version of slash and burn agriculture; exhaust the resource then move on.

There are many tales of survival at sea with food and fresh water quickly becoming scarce, but what struck me about this story was the threat of exposure to the sun all day every day, even in cloudy weather where infra-red radiation that causes sunburn still gets through. As one who easily burns within a hour, I cannot comprehend how anyone would have any skin left after months of full exposure. I was also surprised to learn that the central Pacific is almost void of sea life, with the chance of catching food very slight.

Nathaniel Philbrick gives a full account of the behavior of these men under stress thanks to the log kept by one of them and the memories of another. Psychological insight is provided from modern research and the experiences of those who survived other wrecks at sea.

This is a satisfying book as adventure, as crisis management, as history, as a study in interpersonal relationships and as an education on a lost art. In the Heart of the Sea is no substitute for Moby Dick, a masterpiece of writing, but for someone interested in the facts of the case upon which Melville built his fiction and as a study in human endurance it is well worth reading.

came for the adventure, was almost scared away by the endless sailing and whale hunting terms i probably wouldn’t even understand in my native language but withstood the desire to abandon this book after the first 30 pages and was awarded with one of the most gripping works of nonfiction i ever encountered!!

add misfortune at sea to the list of topics i am irrationally obsessed with (no. 1 on this list still is mountaineering although i’ve never been rockclimbing in my entire life)

I’ve never actually read Moby Dick, but instead chose to read a book that was actual events rather than based on. Chosen as the Popsugar Book Challenge, with the prompt “A Book Set at Sea”, In The Heart of the Sea was the perfect book.

This horrific story about the whaleship named the Essex, took place after leaving the port of Nantucket in 1819. As whalers set sail for the Pacific coastline, they were struck by a giant Bull Sperm whale in the South Pacific waters, which set off the deadly events that would send the twenty-man crew into turmoil. The fight for survival as their ship filled with water, and the men were forced to evacuate into smaller boats and turn to a means of cannibalism.