Inside the Terrifying True Story of the Sperm Whale That Sank the Whale-Ship ‘Essex’ and Inspired Herman Melville’s ‘Moby-Dick’

November 20, 1820, was a bright morning in the heart of the Pacific Ocean, 1,500 nautical miles west of the Galápagos Islands. For the crew of the Essex, it was a day flecked with hope: The lookouts atop the whale-ship saw spouts, telltale signs of nearby sperm whales. But within hours, tragedy, rather than bounty, befell the ship’s crew—events that went on to inspire Herman Melville’s great American novel, Moby-Dick.

The Essex began its final journey in August 1819, departing its home island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, for the sperm-whale-rich Pacific Ocean. The 238-ton ship, built in 1799, was around 100 tons smaller and two decades older than the sleekest ships coming out of Nantucket. But based on the financial success of its previous voyages in search of sperm oil—a high-quality lighting oil derived from the spermaceti organ in the head of the sperm whale—it was considered a desirable, even lucky, ship by local whalers.

But the Essex’s luck didn’t last. From the outset of its 1819 voyage, its crew faced difficulties—or, to a superstitious 19th-century sailor, bad omens. On the second day at sea, a squall knocked the ship completely on its side. “The whole ship’s crew were, for a short time, thrown into the utmost consternation and confusion,” first mate Owen Chase wrote in his account of the voyage, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex. They lost two whaling boats—smaller vessels used to approach and kill whales—but kept moving ahead.

The ship’s success in whale hunting was just as mercurial, with dry spells followed by successful sprees. But after rounding Cape Horn and quietly tracing the Chilean coast to little avail, its sailors found overwhelming success off of Peru in the new year, filling 450 barrels with oil from 11 whales in just two months.

The pace exhausted the crew, but when a lookout spotted a shoal of sperm whales on the morning of November 20, the sailors lowered and manned the whale boats in pursuit nonetheless. Chase’s team harpooned a whale early on, but it thrashed its tail against the boat, and the men retreated to the Essex.

There, Chase observed a “very large spermaceti whale” rapidly approaching—and then ramming into—the ship. After an “appalling and tremendous jar,” the Essex “brought up as suddenly and violently as if she had struck a rock, and trembled for a few seconds like a leaf.”

The whale convulsed on the surface of the waves for a moment before charging again. “It appeared with tenfold fury and vengeance,” Chase wrote. It smashed its head into the bow, completely rupturing the ship’s hull before swimming away.

The crew made for the remaining whale boats, and together with those who had not yet returned to the Essex, spent the next few days salvaging supplies from the wreckage, rigging up new sails on the small craft and debating where to sail for salvation. They ultimately decided to head 2,000 nautical miles to the coast of South America, avoiding nearer islands.

“All the sufferings of these miserable men … might, in all human probability, have been avoided had they immediately after leaving the wreck, steered straight for Tahiti, from which they were not very distant at the time,” a young Melville jotted in his copy of Chase’s Narrative, which later inspired him to tell a tragic whaling tale of his own. “But they dreaded cannibals.”

Ironically and tragically, the crew eventually succumbed to cannibalism themselves over the months that followed. As they drifted at sea and landed on deserted islands, members of the voyage were separated from one another, dying of starvation, dehydration and disease. At first, the sailors only ate comrades who had died naturally. Then, on February 1, 1821, the survivors cast lots to determine who would be sacrificed to feed the others. The unlucky victim submitted to his executions “with great fortitude and resignation,” Chase later wrote. 

Later that month, a British vessel picked up the stragglers in Chase’s group, who were so weak they had to be lifted onto the ship. The captain’s boat was rescued in mid-March—117 days after the sinking. Of the 20 or 21 whalers who left Nantucket on the Essex, only eight survived.

Upon Chase’s return to his family, who had “given me up for lost,” his “unexpected appearance was welcomed with the most grateful obligations and acknowledgements to a beneficent Creator, who had guided me through darkness, trouble and death, once more to the bosom of my country and friends.” Readers have reason for gratitude, too: Though Melville’s Essex-inspired novel was a flop upon publication, it has since become part of the canon of American literature.

Eli Wizevich | | READ MORE

Eli Wizevich is a history correspondent for Smithsonian. He studied history at the University of Chicago and previously wrote for the El Paso Times.