In 1819, the 238-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, the unthinkable happened: in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, the Essex was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, decided instead to sail their three tiny boats for the distant South American coast. They would eventually travel over 4,500 miles. The next three months...

Could you survive being shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean? Tracked by a murderous whale? Whaleship Essex: Disaster at Sea in the True Survival series explores the shocking survival story of the Whaleship Essex and her crew. The book is written with a high interest level and lower level of complexity to serve more mature students reading at lower levels. Clear visuals, colorful photographs (including images of the survivors!), and considerate...

Tells the story of the Essex, a whaleship that set sail from Nantucket in 1819 on a routine voyage, and was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale in the South Pacific, setting the twenty-man crew adrift in three tiny boats.

In the winter of 1820, the New England whaling ship Essex was assaulted by something no one could believe: a whale of mammoth size and will, and an almost human sense of vengeance. The real-life maritime disaster would inspire Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. But that told only half the story. This story reveals the harrowing aftermath, as the ship's surviving crew is pushed to their limits and forced to do the unthinkable to stay alive.

Describes the bloody and dangerous business of whaling aboard the ship Essex in 1819.

Brings together several first-person accounts of the 1820 "Essex" whaleship disaster--which inspired Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick"--and Melville's notes from his reading of Owen Chase's account.