The whaler Essex sailed from Nantucket in 1819 and met its doom in the middle of the Pacific in 1820, when a sperm whale attacked, causing the ship to sink. Adrift in small whaleboats, the crew faced storms, thirst, illness, and starvation. Reduced to cannibalism, but succeeding in one of history's great open-boat journeys, the few survivors were picked up off South America. This provided inspiration for Herman Melville's novel "Moby-Dick".