Never in the history of whale hunting had a ship been attacked by a whale. But then the unthinkable happened. On November 20, 1820, the whale ship Essex was rammed and sunk by an angry whale. Within minutes, the twenty-one man crew, including the fourteen-year-old cabin boy Thomas Nickerson, found themselves stranded in three leaky boats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with barely any supplies and little hope. Three months later, two of the boats were rescued 4,500 miles away, off the coast of South America. Of the twenty-one castaways, only eight survived, including young Thomas. Based on his award-winning bestseller In the Heart of the Sea, Nathaniel Philbrick recreates the amazing events of the ill-fated Essex, and tells the tale of one of the great true-life adventures.