Non-Fiction
1 Best Non-Fiction Book About Sinking of the Whaleship Essex
Histories, biographies and reference works are listed separately from the historical novels above.
Event
Sinking of the Whaleship Essex
20 November 1820–23 February 1821
On 20 November 1820, the Nantucket whaleship Essex was struck and sunk by a sperm whale in the South Pacific. Twenty crewmen escaped in three whaleboats with limited provisions and attempted to reach South America.
The survivors spent more than ninety days at sea. Starvation, dehydration and exposure killed most of them, and the remaining men resorted to cannibalism before rescue. Accounts by Owen Chase and Thomas Nickerson preserved different perspectives on the decisions of Captain George Pollard Jr. and his crew.
Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea reconstructs the event and its influence on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.
