fraklk asked:
My teacher is asking this question for our test tomorrow. I know that the Essex is what gave Herman Melville the idea for Moby Dick, but I don’t know other connections.
My teacher is asking this question for our test tomorrow. I know that the Essex is what gave Herman Melville the idea for Moby Dick, but I don’t know other connections.
Tags: Test Tomorrow
Two actual events inspired Melville’s tale. One was the sinking of the Nantucket whaleship Essex, which foundered in 1820 after it was rammed by a large sperm whale 2,000 miles (3,700 km) from the western coast of South America. First mate Owen Chase, one of eight survivors, recorded the events in his 1821 Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex. Already out-of-print, the book was rare even at the time. Knowing that Melville was looking for it, his father-in-law, Lemuel Shaw, managed to find a copy and buy it for him. When Melville received it, he fell to it almost immediately, heavily annotating it