Owen Chase's memoir of the sinking of the Essex by a whale, which inspired Herman Melville's epic Moby-Dick and the film In The Heart of the Sea.

Owen Chase was the first mate on the ill-fated American whaling ship Essex, which was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in the southern Pacific Ocean in 1820. The crew spent months at sea in leaking boats and endured the blazing sun, attacks by killer whales, and lack of food. The men were forced to resort to cannibalism before the final eight survivors were rescued.

Chase recorded the tale of the ship's sinking and the following events with harrowing clarity in the Wreck of the Whale Ship Essex:

"I turned around and saw him about one hundred rods [500 m or 550 yards] directly ahead of us, coming down with twice his ordinary speed of around 24 knots (44 km/h), and it appeared with tenfold fury and vengeance in his aspect. The surf flew in all directions about him with the continual violent thrashing of his tail. His head about half out of the water, and in that way he came upon us, and again struck the ship."

Filled throughout with period and contemporary art, photographs, maps, and artifacts, this is a beautifully illustrated edition of a classic American memoir, augmented with the writings of other participants, as well as the perspectives of period and contemporary historians.

Owen Chase was first mate of the whale ship Essex, which was struck and sunk by a sperm whale on November 20, 1820. Chase wrote about the incident in Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex. This book, published in 1821, inspired Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick.

Gilbert Anthony King is an American writer and photographer who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America (2012). He is also the author of The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South and has written for newspaper such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.