The Daily Mail reports that divers have found the shipwrecked vessel of a doomed sailor who inspired the classic American tale Moby Dick off the coast of Hawaii.
When, in 1820, a fierce sperm whale sank George Pollard's first whaling ship — Essex — it captured the imagination of author Herman Melville, who published the book in 1851.
When, in 1820, a fierce sperm whale sank George Pollard's first whaling ship — Essex — it captured the imagination of author Herman Melville, who published the book in 1851.
And, just three years after his first ship sank, a second whaler captained by Pollard, 30, struck a coral reef during a night storm and sank in shallow water. Marine archaeologists scouring remote atolls 600 miles northwest of Honolulu have found the wreck site of Pollard's second vessel, the Two Brothers.
Most of the wooden whaling ship, from Nantucket — just off Cape Cod, Massachusetts — disintegrated in Hawaii's warm waters in the nearly two centuries since.
But researchers found several harpoons, a hook used to strip whales of their blubber, and try pots or large cauldrons whalers used to turn whale blubber into oil.
Corals have grown around and on top of many of the objects, swallowing them into the reef.
'To find the physical remains of something that seems to have been lost to time is pretty amazing,' said Nathaniel Philbrick, an author and historian who spent more than three years researching the Essex — and its fatal encounter with the whale — the Two Brothers and their captain.
'It just makes you realise these stories are more than stories. They're about real lives.'
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