In 1820, the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, it was repeatedly rammed and sunk by an eighty-ton bull sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, made for the 3,000-mile-distant coast of South America in three tiny boats. During ninety days at sea under horrendous conditions, the survivors clung to life as one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear.
It was a close race this round, but our next book has prevailed: we’ll be reading In The Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick!
The reading period for this book will be from October 7 to November 7. As always, you can participate in the book club on tumblr by reblogging/replying to the posts on this blog, posting with the tag #theterrorbookclub (no spaces), or tagging us with @theterrorbookclub. If you’ve posted something and we haven’t reblogged it, please let us know! We also have a discord; message us for the link.
