The Essex whaleship struck by a whale — a sketch by survivor Thomas Nickerson

The Essex Whaleship: the True Story Behind Moby Dick

Welcome to Weird Wednesday! Today we’re headed to the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the year 1820, where we’re about to meet the real-life Moby Dick.

Moby Dick is an 1851 novel by Herman Melville, a sailor-turned-author. The story of Captain Ahab battling a giant white whale who sinks a ship might seem unlikely—but surprisingly, Melville based his story on real events. Let’s set the scene:

Whalers in the 1800s sought out sperm whales partly because the whales’ heads contain mass quantities of oil (which resembles semen, hence the name) that was used as a pricey lamp fuel. However, the supply of sperm whales close to shore was soon exhausted, so whalers had to start taking years-long journeys to the middle of the Pacific to ply their trade. Sperm whaling was a cruel, bloody process in which men with harpoons were pitted against creatures with massive teeth (sperm whales are toothed whales, like orcas) and bodies nearly as big as a whaling ship itself. And the men didn’t even hunt whales from that ship, but small, open whaleboats.

At the close of Nov 20, 1820, those little boats were all the sailors of the Essex had left. A giant sperm whale—estimated at 85 feet—repeatedly rammed the ship Essex, opening a large gash in the bow while its sailors were pursuing other whales. No one knows why—the Essex wasn’t the only whaling ship sunk seemingly on purpose by a whale, but such occurrences were rare. It’s possible the whale acted in defense of its pod, which is only fair.

But imagine being in a tiny boat and turning around to see your ship mortally wounded, while between you and the nearest land is hundreds of miles of ocean, storms, sharks, and starvation. 

A sperm whale and calf

(Another source was Mocha Dick, Or The White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a Manuscript Journal, by J. N. Reynolds, the probably somewhat true story of an infamous albino sperm whale who liked to run into ships near Mocha Island, off the central coast of Chile.)

The crew of the Essex saved what they could from their sinking ship, provisioned three small whaleboats, and made for South America, a 4000-mile journey. They made a brief and welcome landing on uninhabited Henderson Island, but soon nearly exhausted its food supplies. Three men decided to stay, while the others set sail again. Captain Pollard promised to send a rescue to the castaways if possible, and he did—a trading ship found all three alive in April of 1821.

The three Essex whaleboats, now holding 17 men, tried to stay together on their journey, but were separated in a storm. A boat with Chase and two others was rescued by a British ship on Feb 18, 90 days after the sinking of the Essex. On Feb 23, a boat with Pollard and one more man came across an American whaling ship. The lone five who reached rescue had needed to engage in survival cannibalism. The third boat, the only one with no navigation equipment, was never definitively found, but an anonymous whaleboat with four skeletons was later discovered on a nearby island.

The story of the Essex is told in the book In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick, and a movie of the same title, and inspired one very famous novel. But the sea has room for endless stories, so let’s have some writing prompts!

“Sperm whaling with its varieties”
John H. Bufford’s & Sons (American, 19th Century)

• Lost at sea. Ships sometimes vanish without a trace, even in this digital age. Chillingly, we don’t know how many sinking ships put out lifeboats of survivors, if those boats are never found. You could write a horror story about all the ghosts in doomed lifeboats that must sail the open ocean. Maybe a psychic can speak to them, or a necromancer raise them to tell the fate of their lost ships. Or you could have a sci-fi story about lost lifeboats ending up on another plane of existence. What would the sailors of different eras say to each other?

• Isle of Dreams. Castaway tales often focus on a protagonist who luckily makes it to some little spit of land, only to realize no one knows where to find them, or that they even survived. But sometimes, as in the case of Shackleton’s Elephant Island, or the Essex men on Henderson, rescue was promised. But how long would marooned sailors keep that hope? You could write a story of survival, politics, found family, or faith, or delve into mystery and even murder.

• A Whale of a Tale. It was hard enough for people to believe that a whale could and did sink the Essex. But what if the story was more fantastic than that? You could have a story where the ship is sunk by a Megalodon (about the size of that 80-foot sperm whale), or one where aliens are witnessed abducting the crew of the missing third lifeboat, or where sperm whales are the dragon-like guardians of an undersea fantasy world. If a surviving Essex sailor had seen something like that, how would they get anyone to believe them about the terrible dangers of the Pacific whaling ground? What might they do to prove their story is true?

• A run of ill luck. Whale attacks on ships were rare. So what if that huge sperm whale was drawn to the Essex by a curse? Maybe someone on board ran afoul of sea superstitions or perhaps someone hexed the ship before it even left port, for personal reasons against one of the crew, or in defense of the whales. Or perhaps someone on board was unknowingly carrying a cursed object, and took it with them into that third lifeboat.

• Home sweet home. Where would the ghosts of the Essex crew end up? They might haunt the wreck location or the open sea where they died in the lifeboats. Or they might follow the survivors all the way back home. Perhaps they’re protective ghosts, guarding the lifeboats, glad someone lived to tell their story. Or they could be vengeful against those who survived. What form would their haunting take? The smell of the ocean and the shouts of whalers? Salt water footprints on the floor? Or a fiery blaze started with a whale oil lantern?

Thanks for spending your Weird Wednesday here! Learn about sperm whale conservation at NOAA.

Sources & further reading:

Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. Viking Press, 2000. On Amazon

The Essex Whaleship: Wikipedia

Stove by a Whale: 20 Men, 3 Boats, 96 Days: Nantucket Historical Association

How realistic are the vengeful whales of “Moby-Dick” and “In the Heart of the Sea,” really?: Quartz