This text is a true description of the wreck of the whaler Essex and the subsequent suffering of twenty people who found themselves on three weak whaleboats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The Essex was torpedoed by a whale in 1819, and a book about it was written by the surviving first mate named Owen Chase. The Wreck of the Whaler, or rather the proposed story about it, served as one of the two main sources of inspiration for Herman Melville's Moby Dick (the other being Reynolds' 1839 "Piss Dick, or the White Whale of the Pacific"). True, while Melville’s narrative ends with a whale attack on the ship, in the description of the wreck of the Essex, everything, in fact, just begins with the attack. Chase's book is almost entirely devoted to wanderings on the Ocean.