An 80-ton sperm whale attacks and sinks the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 3,200 kilometres (2,000 mi) from the western coast of South America. (Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick was in part inspired by this incident.)

The story of the sperm whale’s attack on the whaling ship Essex in 1820 is one of the most dramatic maritime events in history, inspiring Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. The Essex, a Nantucket-based whaling vessel, was rammed twice by a massive sperm whale in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 2,000 miles west of South America. This unusually aggressive behavior, described by survivors, was unprecedented; sperm whales were generally not known to attack ships. The whale, estimated to be about 85 feet long, struck the ship with incredible force, breaking its hull and causing it to sink. The crew of the Essex faced a harrowing ordeal, stranded in open boats with limited supplies. Over the following months, they suffered starvation, dehydration, and exposure, with some resorting to cannibalism to survive. The tragedy of the Essex highlights both the dangers of 19th-century whaling and the raw power of nature’s largest predators.