Tells the story of the Essex, a whaleship that set sail from Nantucket in 1819 on a routine voyage, and was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale in the South Pacific, setting the twenty-man crew adrift in three tiny boats.
Uses interviews, memoirs, radio conversations, and technical research to recreate the last days of the crew of the Andrea Gail, a fishing boat that was lost in a storm off the coast of Nova Scotia in October 1991.