Tag Archives: Essex

  There was one less whale ship butchering whales in 1820. A rightfully angry whale turned on the wooden ship, rammed it below the water line and sank it. Some called it poetic justice. The ship was called the Essex and the story of how some of the crew got to safety from the middle  Continue Reading »

The second most famous whale in the world had no name. We don’t know when it was born or when it died. We just know what it did. On the morning of November 20, 1820, in the Pacific Ocean 2000 miles west of South America, this sperm whale bull, around 85 feet long, attacked a  Continue Reading »

In the 1800s, American whaling was a brutal, murderous undertaking. It was carried out by tough crewmen, on tall ships, based in Nantucket and New Bedford, Massachusetts, who were not afraid of huge whales. They were about to learn a frightening lesson.   After the American Revolutionary War, whalers had decimated the whale population in  Continue Reading »