If you've seen the Hollywood movie "Deep in the Ocean," you won't forget the "revenge" sperm whale. Not only did it sink the whaling boat, but it also followed the sailors drifting all the way to the sea, looking for an opportunity to strike again, and used its huge tail fin to shoot at the drifting dinghy...
Stills from "Deep in the Ocean"
Do sperm whales have the intelligence to take revenge on whaling ships?
Don't think that the movie is completely blind, because there are indeed many records in history that tell us how terrible the angry sperm whales are, the sailors are not afraid to eat rotten food every day, they are afraid of the revenge of the whales.
On September 29, 1807, the whaling ship Union sailed rapidly in the Atlantic Ocean. Whaling ships of the time had become accustomed to bypassing South America into the Pacific in search of more whale habitat. After decades of whaling in the Atlantic, it is no longer possible to satisfy human greed.
At about 10 p.m. that night, the fast-sailing Union suddenly crashed into a behemoth, and the entire whaling ship shook violently. The sailors ran up to the deck and, with the help of the light of the fire, saw that they had hit a huge sperm whale, and the hull had been knocked out of a large hole.
Captain Edward Gardner inspected the large hole and found that the water was leaking too fast for them to drain it, so they immediately ordered the ship to be abandoned. In that era, choosing to abandon the ship on the vast sea was equivalent to pushing yourself to a dead end.
Captain Edward had sailors carry as much fresh water and food as possible onto the whaling dinghy before the Union sank, and the whaling ship sank a few hours later. Captain Edward wisely took his own means of navigation and set the course. After an 8-day voyage, several whaling dinghies arrived at Floris Island.
In fact, The Union was a complete stroke of luck, and it was a coincidence that it collided with sperm whales at night.
Whaling scene
On November 20, 1820, the ship Essex was sailing near the equator in the Pacific Ocean when sailors on the watchtower suddenly spotted a swarm of whales not far away. Captain Pollard did not hesitate to lead the sailors aboard the dinghy, and everyone paddled hard to the goal.
While the whaling boat struggled to catch the whaling, Thomas Nixon, a 15-year-old sailor who remained on the whaling boat, suddenly noticed a huge sperm whale about 26 meters long in front of him. The behemoth rushed toward the whaling boat and crashed into the bow of the ship – similar to the plot of the movie "Deep in the Ocean", when angry sperm whale attacked the old nest while the sailors rowed their dinghies and struggled to catch the whaling!
The whaling ship, which had been violently hit, immediately stopped, and those who remained on board fell violently on the deck. The hull had been knocked out of a large hole, but the sperm whale did not stop, and it went around to the other side and kept churning in the water. Crew members who experienced the incident later recalled that the sperm whale "seemed to vent its rage" — it rushed over again at a faster speed and smashed the port side of the bow at once.
Some of the sailors who were busy draining the water were immediately shaken to the ground, and the sperm whale swung its tail fin vigorously after the impact, and retreated far against the huge whaling boat. When the Essex was already heavily tilted and leaking water, the sperm whale slowly left.
Pollard, the captain of the whaling in the distance, suddenly noticed that the whaling ship seemed to be getting farther and farther away from them. Fearing an accident, they gave up their work and immediately rowed back in a dinghy.
Arriving next to the Essex, Captain Pollard was completely stunned, and he immediately called out to the sailors on board, wondering what had happened to his ship. When the crew told him that an angry sperm whale had crashed into the ship, everyone was surprised.
But they were lucky and were saved in the end.
In June 1850, the whaling ship set out from New Bedford, USA, and nine months later entered the Pacific Ocean, finding a suitable deep-sea whaling site in August 1851.
On August 20, Captain John spotted a herd of sperm whales and immediately led a whaling ship in pursuit. At that time, one of their harpoons inserted a male sperm whale, and the sailors tightened their grip on the rope — usually, the injured sperm whale struggled for a while and lost its strength and was left to be slaughtered.
However, the sperm whale was enraged, and it turned and rushed to the whaling dinghy, jumping out of the water and opening its mouth to crush the dinghy. The sailors fell into the sea and fled in all directions. The sperm whale did not give up, and continued to frantically tear at the fragments of the dinghy — when it spotted the other two whaling dinghies paddling over, it immediately turned around and smashed the second dinghy to pieces.
Captain John saw this and realized they had encountered a troubled fellow and did not dare to get any closer. They abandoned the hunt and waited for the furious sperm whales to swim away before the sailors who had fallen into the sea were rescued. 18 sailors huddled in a dinghy and made a difficult move in the direction of the whaling boat.
However, Captain John turned his head halfway and saw that the whale was following them and was trying to top the dinghy from the bottom of the sea. Fortunately it was off target, and Captain John later recalled: "I saw that the whale had caught up with us. But its first sortie was off target, and it turned sideways to look at our dinghy, apparently filled with anger at missing its prey..."
sperm whale
When Captain John returned to the whaling ship, he finally stopped worrying, and soon he found that the angry sperm whale had not gone far and was still hovering about 2 miles away. It was clear that the whale was unwilling, as was Captain John—he immediately ordered the whaling ship to sail toward the sperm whale, and at the same time picked up the whaling fork himself and prepared for revenge.
Just as the sperm whale was near, John struggled to throw the whaling fork, and at the same time, the sperm whale also attacked the whaling ship. The violent impact made John's center of gravity unstable, and he fell on the deck, and he stood up and ordered: The sailors boarded the whaling dinghy and went after the whale!
After witnessing the fury of the sperm whale just now, the sailors were frightened and motionless, who dared to chase? Captain John said angrily, "If I were as burly as you, you, and you, I would surely devour the whale alive!" ”
No one dared to provoke the sperm whale again, and it was not until late afternoon, when the whale was still hovering near the whaling ship, which made everyone frightened. Suddenly, the sperm whale attacked again, slamming its head into the side of the hull, shaking violently, and the hull was instantly knocked open with a large hole.
John immediately ordered the sailors to close the gap, work hard to drain the water, and throw heavy things such as chains into the sea to reduce the weight. Still, the sea continued to pour into the cabin, and the Ann Alexander didn't seem to last long. Forced to do so, Captain John had no choice but to order the ship to be abandoned.
The sailors immediately boarded the whaling dinghy, and John returned to his cabin to get the navigational gear, only to have a large wave strike and fill the entire cabin with seawater. John hurried back to the upper deck and called out to the whaling dinghy to come back and pick him up. A whaling dinghy returned, and John was rescued.
Captain John recalled, "We were crammed into a small, sturdy dinghy with no water and no bread. The wind and waves at sea are still very large, and the water leakage of the boat is very serious. "Everybody was terrified, they were too far from land, without water and no food, they couldn't last for a few days.
Moby Dick Film Illustrated
They immediately returned to the ship, cutting off the mast in an attempt to get the ship to come straight over to see if there was any chance of saving it. But the ship was so badly damaged that it was impossible to repair it at sea, and after collecting a little food and water, they returned to the dinghy.
Everyone knows that they are facing a dilemma, their food will not last for a few days, and it may be necessary to draw lots soon to decide who will be eaten. However, the crew was lucky that they drifted at a whaling spot where there were plenty of whales living here. That meant there would be other whaling boats coming to hunt the whalings—two days later, a whaling ship spotted the poor sailors.
Captain John later learned that just five months after their rescue, the Rebecca Sims had hunted a sperm whale, and the sailors had found two whaling forks from the whale with the ann Alexander logo on them.
Of course, there are many similar encounters with whaling ships, and we can see such stories, indicating that the narrator was lucky to survive. In fact, there are many whaling boats that never come back after going to sea, and no one knows what happened to them - perhaps, they also encountered angry sperm whales, but they died bad luck at sea.
Of course, there are also people who question such stories, always feeling that sailors exaggerate, after all, those drunken sailors like to brag the most. In any case, such stories have been passed down, and the American scholar Eric Jay Dorlin has collected such stories and told them in his work Leviathan: A History of American Whaling, which is based on this book.
Finally, Melville, the author of Moby Dick, also heard the story of the Ann Alexander and became obsessed with his own creation, even believing that the angry sperm whale was his Moby Dick.
In short, the angry sperm whale must exist, because in the golden age of the American whaling industry, whaling ships traveled through various seas to search, bloodily killing this sea monster. Even if the level of intelligence was inferior to that of humans, instinctive resistance should exist, so news of whaling sailors injured or killed often appeared in the newspapers of that era.
However, people at that time had already put life and death aside for the sake of whale oil and for great profit.