Quickly abandoning ship and thousands of miles from land, Pollard and his crew escaped in leaky lifeboats to begin a horrific ordeal resulting in sickness, starvation, and cannibalism. While on a two-year whaling expedition crisscrossing the Pacific, the Essex was rammed by a sperm whale. The young Melville was famously inspired by the story of George Pollard, the former captain of the whaler Essex. Weaving contemporary accounts and his own experiences as a whaler, Melville created his American masterpiece. Born in 1819, author Herman Melville grew up during the peak of American dominance of the whaling industry, roughly the period between 1820 and the start of the Civil War. Moby-Dick or, The Whale, the allegorical novel about Captain Ahab’s search to kill a great white whale, was based on real-life events. In 2011, maritime heritage archaeologists working with NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries found the wreckage of Two Brothers located nearly six hundred miles northwest of Honolulu.

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