The Real Moby Dick: The Whale That Actually Sank a Ship

Most people know Moby Dick as that very long book they were assigned in high school and possibly did not finish. Big whale, obsessed captain, the sea, themes, symbolism, done. What fewer people know is that the novel was based on something that actually happened, and the real story is significantly more disturbing than anything in the book. The whale attack is almost the least upsetting part of it.

In 1820, a sperm whale rammed a whaling ship called the Essex in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and sank it. This was not a fictional event. It happened. The men survived the sinking and then spent three and a half months adrift in small boats, and what happened during those months is the part that Melville largely left out of his novel for reasons that probably made sense to him at the time.

The Essex and How It Got to the Middle of the Pacific

The Essex was a whaling ship out of Nantucket, Massachusetts, which in the early 1800s was essentially the whaling capital of America. The whole economy of the island ran on whale oil, which was used to fuel lamps and lubricate machinery. It was a brutal industry but an extremely profitable one, and ships like the Essex would leave Nantucket on multi-year voyages hunting sperm whales across the Pacific.

The Essex set out on its final voyage in August 1819 with 21 men aboard, commanded by a 29-year-old captain named George Pollard Jr. It was considered a lucky ship based on its track record, which is the kind of detail that in hindsight feels almost mean to include. Within two days of leaving port it got hit by a squall that nearly sank it. The crew talked Pollard into pressing on anyway because turning back so early felt like a bad omen. This was the first of several catastrophically bad decisions.

They spent over a year working their way around Cape Horn and up along the South American coast before finding a good hunting ground in the South Pacific. By November 1820 they were roughly 1,500 miles west of the Galápagos, having a decent run of whale hunting. And then, on the morning of November 20, 1820, the thing that has never really happened before or since actually happened.

The Attack

A sperm whale rammed the Essex. Twice.

The first mate, Owen Chase, was on deck when he saw a very large whale about 100 yards ahead of the ship, pointed directly at it, and coming fast. He described it later as appearing with “tenfold fury and vengeance.” The whale hit the bow of the ship hard enough to bring it to a dead stop, which on a ship moving through open water is approximately as catastrophic as it sounds. The whale convulsed on the surface nearby, seemingly dazed.

Then it came back and hit it again.

The second impact ruptured the hull completely. The Essex was sinking. Chase’s account described the whale smiting its jaws together as it came in the second time. The whale was estimated to be about 85 feet long, significantly larger than a typical male sperm whale, which runs more like 60 feet. It appeared to be covered in scars, suggesting it had been in encounters with whalers before.

The attack was so shocking specifically because nothing like it had been documented before. Sperm whales were hunted, harassed, and killed. They thrashed, they destroyed small boats, they occasionally injured men. But a whale deliberately turning and ramming a full-sized ship was something outside anyone’s experience. When Chase wrote his account of it afterward, the phrase he kept coming back to was that it seemed intentional.

The Decision That Made Everything Worse

The 20 surviving crew members escaped in three small whaleboats about 20 feet long each. They had limited food and water. The nearest land was the Marquesas Islands, roughly 1,200 miles to the west.

Captain Pollard wanted to sail to the Marquesas. His first mate and second mate refused. The Marquesas, they argued, were rumored to be inhabited by cannibals, and they weren’t willing to risk it.

So instead they decided to sail for South America, which was about 4,000 miles away in the other direction and required them to first sail south into rougher latitudes before they could catch winds heading east. This decision, made specifically to avoid the risk of cannibalism, is the thing that made cannibalism inevitable.

They found a small island, Henderson Island, after about two weeks and stopped briefly, but it couldn’t sustain them. Three men chose to stay on the island and take their chances. The remaining 17 got back in the boats and kept sailing east.

What Happened in the Boats

By January, the food was gone. Men began dying of starvation and exposure. The crew made the decision to eat the bodies of those who died, which was documented as a recognized custom of the sea at the time. This is grim but at least nobody was making active choices yet.

Then the food from that ran out too.

On Pollard’s boat, four men remained alive. Charles Ramsdell, one of the survivors, proposed that they draw lots to determine who would be killed so the others could survive. Pollard initially refused. Then he agreed. The lot fell to his 18-year-old cousin, Owen Coffin, who Pollard had promised his aunt he would protect before leaving Nantucket.

Pollard offered to take Coffin’s place. Coffin refused. He said it was his right to do so.

Ramsdell drew the lot of executioner. He was Coffin’s close friend. He shot him. When the rescue ship found Pollard and Ramsdell weeks later, they were gnawing on bones.

Eight of the original 21 men survived. They were rescued in February and March of 1821, between 93 and 117 days after the sinking.

What Happened to Captain Pollard

Pollard went home to Nantucket and then, because he was a whaling captain and that was his life, went back out to sea. He captained a second ship, the Two Brothers. It wrecked on a reef near the Hawaiian Islands in 1823.

After that, no ship owner in Nantucket would trust him with a vessel. He retired from the sea and became the town’s night watchman. Back then, this was one of the least prestigious jobs available to a former captain. Owen Coffin’s mother never forgave him and couldn’t be in the same room with him.

Every year on November 20th, the anniversary of the sinking, Pollard reportedly locked himself in his room and fasted in memory of the men he lost.

When Herman Melville visited Nantucket in 1852, a year after Moby Dick was published, he met Pollard on his last day on the island. The book had already flopped commercially. Pollard didn’t know it existed. The two exchanged a few words. Melville wrote afterward that Pollard was “to the islanders a nobody, to me the most impressive man, tho’ wholly unassuming, even humble, that I ever encountered.”

Moby Dick spent decades out of print before being rediscovered as a masterpiece after Melville’s death.