In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a work of narrative history by Nathaniel Philbrick. In 1819, the whaleship Essex sailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts, on what was meant to be a routine voyage in search of whales. More than a year later, in the remote Pacific, a sperm whale rammed the ship and sank it. Afraid of the islands to the west, the twenty men of the crew chose instead to set out in three small open boats for South America, thousands of miles away. Only eight would survive the months that followed. Philbrick reconstructs the disaster and the crew's ordeal of hunger, thirst and desperation, and he places their story within the history of Nantucket and the whaling trade. It won the 2000 National Book Award for Nonfiction.