On this day, the American whaling ship Essex from Nantucket, Massachusetts, was attacked and sunk by an unusually large sperm whale bull 3,700 kilometres from the west coast of South America. The 20-man crew was forced to make for land in three whaleboats with the food and water they could salvage from the wreck. After a month at sea the crew landed on the uninhabited Henderson Island. Three men elected to stay on the island, from which they were rescued in April 1821, while the remaining seventeen set off again for the coast of South America. The men suffered severe dehydration, starvation and exposure on the open ocean, and the survivors eventually resorted to cannibalism. By the time they were rescued in February 1821, three months after the sinking of Essex, only five of the seventeen were alive. The tragedy attracted international attention, and inspired Herman Melville to write his 1851 novel, Moby Dick.
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