In this episode of Shipwreck Tales, John McCrystal joins Graeme Hill to recount the extraordinary true story of the Essex: the Nantucket whaler rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820, later inspiring Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. What begins as a freak collision in the middle of the Pacific becomes a harrowing account of survival, starvation, impossible choices, and the long shadow the ordeal cast over those who made it home.