Wrath of the Leviathan

When Herman Melville published Moby-Dick, readers were thrilled by the terrifying concept of a vengeful, giant sperm whale attacking a ship. Few realized that the climax of the novel was not fiction, but a horrific historical reality. In 1820, the Nantucket whaleship Essex was rammed and shattered by an impossibly large, enraged sperm whale, leaving twenty men stranded in tiny lifeboats thousands ...