The true story of 'Moby Dick' doesn't leave much to the imagination. The documentary is told via a voice over and through occasional experts as we watch, in black and white footage, the crew survive in small whaleboats after the 'white whale' brings down their ship. The crew must stick together with no water and food running out while months at sea. The most disturbing point is in their last weeks at sea where crew members must at first resort to cannibalism of dead corpses in order to survive and later kill a member of the crew. In the end, this tale is not for the faint hearted and yet it is an enthralling tale of what humans can go through and what they will do in order to survive. Most will find this a good eye opener to the story of 'Moby Dick', a good resource for educators doing a unit on the book. It is worth at least one viewing by all history lovers.
History's Mysteries (TV Series)
The Essex: The True Story of Moby Dick (2000)
User Reviews
Review this title3 Reviews
well made documentary
sistershrew30 March 2006
A neat film trailing the event that inspired a classic. Following the crash of the giant whaling boat and it's surviving crew members, you witness what unfolds when reality and the recognition of potential demise sets in.
Despite what the title reads, this film centers mainly around the captain and crew occupying the ship. After a brief introductory to the practice of whaling, passages recorded from the actual crew members acquaint us with a wavery, waffling captain and a strong-headed first mate. The documentary, complete with great animations reenacting the events, soon takes us to the climacteric scene where 'Moby Dick' makes his first appearance, durably altering the course of the seaman's' lives and triggering the event that eventually launched a thousand novels.
But the massive whale's part is a brief one, and it's the events and struggles that transpire afterwards that's most likely to stick in your mind. Maybe it's the way the crew fears of steering for a plausible island for refuge in the possibly of cannibals, only to realize on a later time that irony is a ceaseless domineer. Or perhaps it's how a shipmate is forced to take the life of the friend he'd known since adolescence in order to salvage he and the crews' own biting starvation.
On the other hand, it's not unimaginable that you could just as easily find this film painfully arid. That's why I don't recommend it for folks who can't sit through a program on the History Channel without falling asleep. But it's suggested for anyone else with an open mind and roughly one and a half hours to spare.
Despite what the title reads, this film centers mainly around the captain and crew occupying the ship. After a brief introductory to the practice of whaling, passages recorded from the actual crew members acquaint us with a wavery, waffling captain and a strong-headed first mate. The documentary, complete with great animations reenacting the events, soon takes us to the climacteric scene where 'Moby Dick' makes his first appearance, durably altering the course of the seaman's' lives and triggering the event that eventually launched a thousand novels.
But the massive whale's part is a brief one, and it's the events and struggles that transpire afterwards that's most likely to stick in your mind. Maybe it's the way the crew fears of steering for a plausible island for refuge in the possibly of cannibals, only to realize on a later time that irony is a ceaseless domineer. Or perhaps it's how a shipmate is forced to take the life of the friend he'd known since adolescence in order to salvage he and the crews' own biting starvation.
On the other hand, it's not unimaginable that you could just as easily find this film painfully arid. That's why I don't recommend it for folks who can't sit through a program on the History Channel without falling asleep. But it's suggested for anyone else with an open mind and roughly one and a half hours to spare.
Call Me "Unlucky."
rmax30482326 November 2017
Warning: Spoilers
The Essex was a whaling ship out of Nantucket Island in 1820. It rounded Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean and headed for the breeding grounds of the sperm whale hundreds of miles west of the coast of Chile, a trip expected to last two years.
It was necessary for the Essex to travel that far because overhunting had cleaned out most of the whales in the Atlantic. Before the Petroleum Age, whale oil was used for everything from machinery to lamps and the industry maintained a strong lobby in Washington.
Whatever the value of sperm whale oil, it wasn't worth it in the case of the Essex. A sperm whale attacked and sank her. The sinking stranded the 20-man crew in three lifeboats i the southern Pacific with little food and water. During the 95 days the survivors were at sea, they ate the bodies of five crewmen who had died.
When that was insufficient, members of the crew drew lots to determine whom they would sacrifice so that the others could live. A total of seven crew members were cannibalized before the eight survivors were rescued. One of the boats was never found.
Two survivors wrote accounts of their experiences and Herman Melville turned the story into one of the masterpieces of American literature.
It's a well-done documentary, mostly reenactments with some CGIs. As difficult as it is to listen to, and watch, the cannibalism, the slaughter of the whales is still more explicit and even offensive to most modern sensibilities. Whales, after all, are mammals and reasonably intelligent it seems, like so many other pelagic mammals.
It was necessary for the Essex to travel that far because overhunting had cleaned out most of the whales in the Atlantic. Before the Petroleum Age, whale oil was used for everything from machinery to lamps and the industry maintained a strong lobby in Washington.
Whatever the value of sperm whale oil, it wasn't worth it in the case of the Essex. A sperm whale attacked and sank her. The sinking stranded the 20-man crew in three lifeboats i the southern Pacific with little food and water. During the 95 days the survivors were at sea, they ate the bodies of five crewmen who had died.
When that was insufficient, members of the crew drew lots to determine whom they would sacrifice so that the others could live. A total of seven crew members were cannibalized before the eight survivors were rescued. One of the boats was never found.
Two survivors wrote accounts of their experiences and Herman Melville turned the story into one of the masterpieces of American literature.
It's a well-done documentary, mostly reenactments with some CGIs. As difficult as it is to listen to, and watch, the cannibalism, the slaughter of the whales is still more explicit and even offensive to most modern sensibilities. Whales, after all, are mammals and reasonably intelligent it seems, like so many other pelagic mammals.
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