In the heart of the sea : the tragedy of the whaleship Essex /
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,...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Viking,
2000.
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| Summary: | 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 tested just how far humans could go in their battle against the sea as, one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease and fear. ... This is a timeless account of the human spirit under extreme duress, but it is also a story about a community and about the kind of men and women who lived in a forbidding, remote island like Nantucket. -- Dust jacket. |
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| Physical Description: | xvi, 302 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm |
| Awards: | National Book Award for Non-fiction, 2000 |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-289) and index. |
| ISBN: | 0670891576 9780670891573 0141001828 9780141001821 9780606365741 0606365745 9780143126812 0143126814 0613338200 9780613338202 |