In The Heart of the Sea
The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
Viking, May 2000
- Soon to be a major motion picture starring Christian Helmsworth as Owen Chase, directed by Ron Howard and produced by Warner Bros.
- Film release December 11, 2015
- National Book Award Winner
- New York Times Bestseller
Winner of the National Book Award for Non-Fiction, 2000, IN THE HEART OF THE SEA is a gripping chronicle of the tragic 1820’s voyage which inspired MOBY DICK.
The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents-including a long-lost account written by the ship’s cabin boy-and penetrating details about whaling and the Nantucket community to reveal the chilling events surrounding this epic maritime disaster. An intense and mesmerizing read, IN THE HEART OF THE SEA is a monumental work of history forever placing the Essex tragedy in the American historical canon.
“In the Heart of the Sea is a spellbinding yarn, and, like Melville’s classic, awash with human frailty.”
—Time Magazine
“The best sort of popular history.”—The Wall Street Journal