The Cynical Historian

In the Heart of the Sea | Based on a True Story (2016x21)

Air date: May 14, 2016

In the Heart of the Sea is fun movie that shows the travails of the Essex, whose 1820 adventure was the inspiration for Melville's famous Moby Dick. It has perhaps the best showing of what it was like to sail in the Golden Age of sailing. That being said, it also has a rather unforgivable framing device that is so easily fixable that I am rather confused as to how they made such a blunder. ------------------------------------------------------------ more videos: previous: https://youtu.be/J0cRTfqeh_o related: https://youtu.be/nnWypBbT8PI ------------------------------------------------------------ references: Owen Chase, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex of Nantucket (New York: W.B. Gilley, 1821). https://books.google.ca/books?id=qgaD97DaxfQC&lpg=PA13&dq=Narrative%20of%20the%20Most%20Extraordinary%20and%20Distressing%20Shipwreck%20of%20the%20Whale-Ship%20Essex%20of%20Nantucket&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q=Narrative%20of%20the%20Most%20Extraordinary%20and%20Distressing%20Shipwreck%20of%20the%20Whale-Ship%20Essex%20of%20Nantucket&f=false Stackpole, Renny. “In the Heart of the Sea.” The New England Quarterly, v73 n4 (Dec. 2000) 687-689. Accessed 4/16/2006: http://mysite.du.edu/~ttyler/ploughboy/1821%20-%20Owen%20Chase%20-%20Essex%20Narrative.htm Paul Gilje, Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 228-264. https://amzn.to/2OrKwDB Documentary on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71sn-WDQoXI http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-life-horror-that-inspired-moby-dick-17576/?no-ist http://news.discovery.com/history/in-the-heart-of-the-sea-fact-and-fiction-151211.htm http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nantucket-came-to-be-whaling-capital-of-world-180957198/?no-ist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_whaling https://en.wikipedi