In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
The riveting bestseller tells the story of the true events that inspired Melville's Moby-Dick. Winner of the National Book Award, Nathaniel Philbrick's book is a fantastic saga of survival and adventure, steeped in the lore of whaling, with deep resonance in American literature and history. In the Heart of the Sea, recently adapted into a major feature film starring Chris Hemsworth, is a book for the ages.
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Community Reviews
In 1820, the whaleship Essex set sail from Nantucket for routine whaling work. Several oversights made before setting sail meant when an eighty-ton bull sperm whale repeatedly rammed and sunk the ship in the far reaches of the South Pacific, the twenty-man crew were left in a desperate situation. Boarding three small boats and fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, the crew began a 3,000 mile journey to the coast of South America in hopes of rescue. They spent ninety days at sea, enduring horrendous conditions, and eventually succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and what they initially feared, cannibalism. In the Heart of the Sea is written so powerfully with such extraordinary detail; the combination of factual evidence woven into a seemingly fictional narrative, makes this book such a page-turner. No facts are spared and while similar tragedies and relevant historical events are discussed in detail, this information is provided in such a way the reading experience is only enhanced and not dulled by overbearing enthusiasm. Philbrick's writing is exceptional and a book that could so easily be overladen with pointless trivia becomes one of the most amazing true life stories ever told.
Review
I was very surprised by the high quality of this book. It seems like survival books is maybe the highest quality book category out there. And a single story plot is also the ideal way to teach history and technology which makes many survival books just amazing for teaching everything from philosophy, history, culture and technology. The plot focus is why I read all survival stories I can get my hands on and this is a very high quality one with a ton of good historical info even though the story itself is not quite as amazing as the 3-4 amazing survival books that changed how I think about that world.
My main negative issue with this book is the story itself as it's not quite an amazing survival story. So while the writer does a spectacular job and does not miss a single beat what he has to work with is not quite a top 10 survival story.
Firstly, cannibalism is often an important part of these shipwreck survival stories, but it's never really something you want to read too much about. The book did tell the story as well and interesting as it could but it's still not really a story that makes you want to imagine you are there with them. Bloody and disgusting whale hunting is the same. Both are things I'd never even want to be close to so I feel a bit hesitant about imagining these scenes while reading them. In other survival stories I had several places I wanted to live in for some time or several events I wanted to experience. Here there are 2 such places. One is a small island they get to. Yet we don't learn much about their story there besides a few details about how they found food and water. So my favorite place and event in the book unfortunately didn't play a big part of the story. The second place is, Nantucket, which also was very interesting. Unfortunately we don't quite experience any stories on the island. It's yet again mostly fact and history based. Yet I'd still recommend the book even if you just want to learn something about old Nantucket. Because reading about historical cities is just a spectacular experience.
Then there is a second issue with the book. The story itself is about cannibalism and mistakes - not about clever survival. They stranded in the ocean because they tried to avoid a close by island chain they thought had a cannibal tribe living on it. They were of course wrong, but it's not clear why they were so sure the islands had such a tribe on them that they risked their lives in an extreme way and instead depended on a ton of luck to survive. Their stupid mistakes and cannibalism is probably why we don't have more and more detailed stories from this survival story. It's not a story all people would tell willingly. And I assume most sailors didn't have the resources and need to seek out ghostwriters for a story they may not be able to tell well. We for example learn very little about how the 3 sailors survived on the island and what they thought about while being stuck there. We do learn a lot of stuff about Nantucket, whale hunting and the survival story on one of ship boats. But the survival story overall feels like many mistakes, some lucky events, and a lack of introspection. But some of these unknown things of course add to that mystery. All survival stories have these unknown factors to them. Even modern survival stories often have different accounts from different people as you never want to make yourself look bad while talking about events that killed people.
And most importantly. The book contains so much historical info that you may not even like survival stories but still enjoy the book. It's a highly recommended read as it's a very good book.
Conclusion
It's a very high quality book with a ton of historical details and lots of research behind it. And it's an important story to learn about if you have the stomach for it. The cannibalism in it is not detailed so you don't have to fear it being too much for regular readers.
On the other hand the story feels a bit short compared to other survival stories. The whale hunting industry basically takes up as much space in the book as the survival story. And as these people are largely uneducated and ignorant they don't make many intellectual decisions to survive. So it's not an Ernest Shackleton type story. We are just there with them and just experience their final decisions without understanding how they reached them or why they kept making dangerous mistakes. I guess being ignorant is dangerous. But it's weird that people can be so ignorant that they let their imagination control their decisions.
There is also a movie about the book. But it's largely just a very loose reimagination of the story to make it more Hollywood and conflict focused. So it's not the real story. Chris Hemsworth is also terrible in it. And it constantly has weird close-up shots everywhere. In the movie they don't want to talk about the cannibalism. Which is not true to real life. There is also a weird conflict between the 2 leads, good vs. evil. While in real life they both got everyone into trouble. Then there is some silly top-down leadership conflict with the ship owners. And a 14 year old sailor is suddenly an old man in 1849 and inspires the writing of Moby Dick. There are a ton of weird things in the movie that are just made up and silly. The book is much better.
I was very surprised by the high quality of this book. It seems like survival books is maybe the highest quality book category out there. And a single story plot is also the ideal way to teach history and technology which makes many survival books just amazing for teaching everything from philosophy, history, culture and technology. The plot focus is why I read all survival stories I can get my hands on and this is a very high quality one with a ton of good historical info even though the story itself is not quite as amazing as the 3-4 amazing survival books that changed how I think about that world.
My main negative issue with this book is the story itself as it's not quite an amazing survival story. So while the writer does a spectacular job and does not miss a single beat what he has to work with is not quite a top 10 survival story.
Firstly, cannibalism is often an important part of these shipwreck survival stories, but it's never really something you want to read too much about. The book did tell the story as well and interesting as it could but it's still not really a story that makes you want to imagine you are there with them. Bloody and disgusting whale hunting is the same. Both are things I'd never even want to be close to so I feel a bit hesitant about imagining these scenes while reading them. In other survival stories I had several places I wanted to live in for some time or several events I wanted to experience. Here there are 2 such places. One is a small island they get to. Yet we don't learn much about their story there besides a few details about how they found food and water. So my favorite place and event in the book unfortunately didn't play a big part of the story. The second place is, Nantucket, which also was very interesting. Unfortunately we don't quite experience any stories on the island. It's yet again mostly fact and history based. Yet I'd still recommend the book even if you just want to learn something about old Nantucket. Because reading about historical cities is just a spectacular experience.
Then there is a second issue with the book. The story itself is about cannibalism and mistakes - not about clever survival. They stranded in the ocean because they tried to avoid a close by island chain they thought had a cannibal tribe living on it. They were of course wrong, but it's not clear why they were so sure the islands had such a tribe on them that they risked their lives in an extreme way and instead depended on a ton of luck to survive. Their stupid mistakes and cannibalism is probably why we don't have more and more detailed stories from this survival story. It's not a story all people would tell willingly. And I assume most sailors didn't have the resources and need to seek out ghostwriters for a story they may not be able to tell well. We for example learn very little about how the 3 sailors survived on the island and what they thought about while being stuck there. We do learn a lot of stuff about Nantucket, whale hunting and the survival story on one of ship boats. But the survival story overall feels like many mistakes, some lucky events, and a lack of introspection. But some of these unknown things of course add to that mystery. All survival stories have these unknown factors to them. Even modern survival stories often have different accounts from different people as you never want to make yourself look bad while talking about events that killed people.
And most importantly. The book contains so much historical info that you may not even like survival stories but still enjoy the book. It's a highly recommended read as it's a very good book.
Conclusion
It's a very high quality book with a ton of historical details and lots of research behind it. And it's an important story to learn about if you have the stomach for it. The cannibalism in it is not detailed so you don't have to fear it being too much for regular readers.
On the other hand the story feels a bit short compared to other survival stories. The whale hunting industry basically takes up as much space in the book as the survival story. And as these people are largely uneducated and ignorant they don't make many intellectual decisions to survive. So it's not an Ernest Shackleton type story. We are just there with them and just experience their final decisions without understanding how they reached them or why they kept making dangerous mistakes. I guess being ignorant is dangerous. But it's weird that people can be so ignorant that they let their imagination control their decisions.
There is also a movie about the book. But it's largely just a very loose reimagination of the story to make it more Hollywood and conflict focused. So it's not the real story. Chris Hemsworth is also terrible in it. And it constantly has weird close-up shots everywhere. In the movie they don't want to talk about the cannibalism. Which is not true to real life. There is also a weird conflict between the 2 leads, good vs. evil. While in real life they both got everyone into trouble. Then there is some silly top-down leadership conflict with the ship owners. And a 14 year old sailor is suddenly an old man in 1849 and inspires the writing of Moby Dick. There are a ton of weird things in the movie that are just made up and silly. The book is much better.
Brutal. Don't mess with whales.
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