Recounts the story of the 1820 wreck of the whaleship Essex, which inspired Melville's classic "Moby-Dick," and describes its doomed crew's ninety-day attempt to survive whale attacks and the elements on three tiny lifeboats.

In 1856, twelve-year-old Celia Snow sets sail with her parents on her father's whaling ship and chronicles her subsequent adventures on the more than two-year voyage in a series of letters written to her cousin Abigail.

Recounts the sinking of the whaling ship Essex in 1820, which inspired the novel Moby Dick.

Hoping to escape the horrors of his past, disgraced ex-army surgeon Patrick Sumner signs up as the ship's doctor on an ill-fated Arctic whaling expedition. Soon he's confronted by a new horror, the brutish killer Henry Drax. When Sumner and his crewmates are left stranded on the merciless Arctic wasteland, he discovers just how far he's prepared to go against the savagery of nature and man.