In the Heart of the Sea: The Horrific True Story Behind Moby-Dick

A man winds his way through the muck and mire of a 19th-century American port – Nantucket, centre of the world’s whaling industry. He knocks on a door, enters, and begs an exhausted looking man to tell him his story in exchange for his life savings. He’s heard rumours, he says, rumours about the 1820 sinking of the Essex, a whaling ship. The man – played by Ben Whishaw – turns out to be Herman Melville. He’s searching for the true story that will lead him to write Moby-Dick.

Ever since its publication in 1851, Moby-Dick has sparked the imagination with its prophetic, digressive and dangerous themes. So much so, it eclipsed the true story the novel is based on. But that real-life tale – that of a vengeful whale taking out a whaling ship – has now been adapted in true swashbuckling style by Ron Howard. The film, ‘In the Heart of the Sea’, is based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s maritime history book of the same name.

The story goes like this. In 1819, the whale-ship Essex set sail from Nantucket. A year into the voyage, 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) west of South America, a pod of whales was sighted by the lookout. The harpoonists set out in their small whale boats to reap their bounty.

But one of those small boats – that of first mate Owen Chase – was smashed to pieces by a whale’s tail. The crew returned to the Essex, whereupon, according to Chase, they saw “a large spermacetti whale about 85ft in length heading directly for them as if fired with revenge”.