Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex -- Part 1

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Whaling, it turns out, is not an easy endeavor. One ship found out the very hard way just how deadly the practice can be, covered here by Wes in part 1 of this new series by Tooth & Claw. Watch here: https://youtu.be/hyV6evjgHiI ~~ Remi: Go to https://shopremi.com/TOOTH and use code TOOTH at checkout for 50% off your new night guard. Coast: Get up to $2,000 credit for your business when you get started at https://coastpay.com/CLAW. Terms apply Smalls: For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping, when you head to https://Smalls.com/tooth Hims: To get simple, online access to personalized, affordable care for ED, Hair Loss, Weight Loss, and more, visit https://Hims.com/TOOTHFabric: Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family—apply today in just minutes at https://meetfabric.com/TOOTH ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We have our wildlife biologist, Wes Larson. He's the reason we keep coming back for more. He's the man. I am not the star. If he can't do it, no one can. And then we have Mike Smith with us. Pretty replaceable. Yeah, I'd say expendable.

I would say of the three of us. Yeah, no. I mean, come on. I've been planning my exit strategy for use. You have? Oh, yeah. What is it? First of all, I got to get out of these pants.

You guys up to speed on the whole raw denim deal? No. Yeah, it's limiting my movement. So basically what it is is you buy a pair of, this is what I've learned from research on the internet. You buy a pair of pants and then you wear them for six months to break them in. And then they start feeling pretty comfortable from what I've gathered. Oh, yeah.

That seems like a bad deal. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. This is crazy. It is how people get their favorite pairs of pants ever. Yeah. And you may not recognize me. I got blue hair. If you're on YouTube, you're probably like, oh, I thought it was brown and then pink and now it's blue.

Yeah. But I'm Jeff. You're wilding, dude. The three most popular cotton candy colors. That's true. Chocolate. Yeah, chocolate, right? Oh, man.

I don't know. A brown cotton candy sounds gross to me. Jeff, you got a new member of your family over there, don't you? Yeah, I put him in a boarding today, though. Okay. I'm trying to find him a place for, while we're gone, but... It's a dog, not a kid. Yeah, I got a three-legged dog.

A giraffe at the zoo bit his leg off. I missed what he said. I said it's not a kid, just so everyone knows. Wait a minute. Is the giraffe thing true? No, that's not true. And then, well, so then how do he lose his leg? He lost his leg because he got hit by a car and his previous owners maybe

something happened to where he didn't get the right surgery. So when he went to the shelter, it wasn't healing right and they had to amputate. That's how he lost his leg. That's kind of true. We don't know if he got hit by a car. Okay, but something happened to his leg where it broke it. It could have been a giraffe. But it didn't bite it off.

You said it a giraffe bit off his leg. That's true. Yeah. So a giraffe could have kicked him. Yeah, I wanted a dog with four legs, but they offered me 25% off for a dog with three legs. It makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, you know, you've always been good with money, Jeff. So, yeah.

Good job. Good job adopting, though. Yeah. He seems really cute. He's a great dog. Yeah, his name is Shanks. Uh-huh. After a one-piece guy that only has three limbs, right?

Yeah. That's the coolest name. By far the coolest dog name I've ever heard. It is a great name. I like it. A good test was mom because mom has no idea who shanks is at all. And she is like, I think it's cute. So that's good.

There we go. People who don't know who shanks is kind of like. You got the Cindy Larson stamp of approval, which isn't always easy to get. Makes him seem kind of like a prison dog. Yeah. Like he's going to shank someone. Yeah. Sure. I like that.

Well, any other big news out there between you two? No. I didn't know you had to let him go to the bathroom. Yeah. There's a lot of work. Well. It's only, what, 12 more, 13 more years of that. Because in that one movie, Meet the Fockers.

That's the second one. The cat how to just use the toilet. Yeah. That's Meet the Parents, right? Yeah. Meet the Fokkers. Not that meet the parents was like that good, but there sure was a huge drop in quality as we got to meet the Fokkers.

Do you think male dogs actually kind of like it when they're missing one of their back legs so they don't have to raise it when they pee? They can just pee whenever. They're ready to go. My dog. That might be true. He's missing a front leg, right? Yeah.

Yeah. My dog, like, so he's a male, but he pees sitting down and he pees all over his front leg. Like dad. Dad does both of those things. Oh, man. Hey, well, we got a big story today. It's a bigan. Big animal? Yeah, both in the size of the animal and the story itself.

This was one of the stories that when we started the podcast was one of the first ones to immediately pop into my head. I know I've said that a few times, but it's very true with this one. This is based off of a book and a true story. Which one wasn't it true with? I've told the truth with all of those. No, Treadwell was like top of mine. This one, honestly, though, was probably top three, which is kind of crazy. Yeah.

So it's a big episode. And in 2011, I think, one of our mutual friends, Shane, had read this book and he recommended it to me strongly. He said, you know, Wes, I think you'd really like this book. It's about a true story. It's about animals. It's just really fascinating, and I bought a copy of it, and I just inhaled it. I loved it.

And that book is called In the Heart of the Sea. It's written by Nathaniel Philbrick, and it is about the story of the Whaleship Essex, which is the true life inspiration for one of the most famous literary works of all time. Mike? Moby. Moby Dick. I don't like the word dick, so that's why I didn't say it. Yeah.

What? Bleep it. Yeah, Moby Richard. You know, I always call people a mopee dick when they're being kind of mopee, and I never get a good laugh for it. And I think it's pretty funny. Sure. No one ever thinks that's that funny. So I guess I should stop.

All right. So this is going to be a two-parter. And really, there's not a lot of wildlife in this story as far as, you know, what we typically are talking about. there's a very quick, crazy interaction with the whale. And we're going to be talking a lot about whaling and the impact it had on even some kind of surprising wildlife. But it's not a typical story in that this is more a story of survival than it is an attack, if that makes sense. Before we start, I want to read a tweet that I recently saw, which isn't my typical way to start an episode. But I really like this tweet.

It's kind of laugh. It's called an X. Yeah, an X. Let me read this Zete to you. you guys. It is from Prince Vogelphrey. I don't know. I'm not, I don't know who this person is. I don't know anything about their account. I'm not promoting them just so you know. I don't know anything about them. But I did like this tweet. It did make me think. Be careful nowadays. Yeah. Yeah. And it says, maybe it all went wrong when we killed the whales. Maybe their songs kept the great dream together.

Vast brains slowly, carefully ordering the world with actions subtler than apes could ever see. God is dead, his blubber lit a lamp in London, which I thought was really pretty. Wow. And then I do think he maybe kind of stole the idea from Cormick McCarthy, who wrote a book on whales and men or an essay. And it says, whales have been evolving for 30 million years to R1 million. A sperm whale's brain is seven times the size of mine. The great size of his body has little to do with the great size of his brain. They actually have the biggest brain of any living animal ever.

other than a place to keep it. I have what if fantasies. What if the catalysts are the key to understanding creation lay somewhere in the immense mind of the whale? Some species go for months without eating anything, just completely idle, so they have this incredible mental apparatus, and no one has the least notion what they do with it. Lily says that the most logical supposition, based on physiological and ecological evidence, is that they contemplate the universe. Suppose God came back from wherever it is he's been and asked us smilingly if we figured it out yet suppose he wanted to know if it had finally occurred to us to ask the whale and then he sort of looked around and said by the way where are the whales so both of those I thought were

really poignant thoughts about this amazing animal that has the biggest brain ever and we have no idea whales might have bigger brains but like I'd like to see a whale try to fake going to the moon like we have Sure. You got to stop. You got to stop it. Jeff. Jeff needs, this dog will be good for Jeff to get some fresh air.

No, I do think, though, we've talked about whales a bit and about, you know, their songs and their sociality and just all the different things that are so incredible about these animals. And I really do think there's a good chance that we have no idea, you know, just how deep thinkers whales might, you know, could. be. So I do just want to bring that up before I talk about the absolute horrors that we inflicted on whales during a lot of our modern history. Technically or literally speaking, they are some of the deepest thinkers. Yeah, good point. It's a very astute observation. Their, Prince and Cormac are both aware that there are still whales. We didn't get them all. Yes. We didn't get them all, but we sure did a number on them and we sure, it wasn't like an easy way that we killed him too. You know, we, we tortured whales. We have been very violent to whales. And I do just want to let people know,

we're going to be talking about some of the whaling practices in depth in this episode, and they aren't easy to hear about. But I do think it's important that we kind of learn from our mistakes and reflect on the past. And in a nice way, it's a good way to see how far we've come in some of our attitudes toward these animals. You want to know what kind of, what method of torture would not be effective on a whale at all is waterboarding. They'd actually be like really excited. Ah, yes. Thank you.

I was getting quite dry. A little more. Well, and interestingly. Right in my blowhole. Thank you. Airboarding wouldn't really work either. That's true. They're impermeable to most of our best tortures.

Okay. So most of my research does come from this book. I did read some other articles and stuff. There are endless sources of information about this story because it is so, it is such a big historical event. You could probably burn their feet. Yeah, they don't really have feet. Yeah, dangling them over a fire. Their flukes.

Yeah. That worked. Put them on an iron maiden. Like a huge one, though. All right. As the whale ship Essex left the tiny Nantucket Harbor in August of 1819, their 21,000, men aboard. 12 of these men were from Nantucket and had been raised in the whaling industry, while nine others had come from off island. They'd be gone for two to three years in search of

sperm whales in the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, and each man aboard had hopes of returning richer than when he'd left. But none of these men would return on the Essex, and only nine would survive this voyage. The story of the Essex would become one of the most harrowing and unbelievable tales of death and survival. And like I mentioned earlier, it would inspire one of the greatest literary works of all time. And at the center of the story, there's a massive, enraged sperm whale. All right.

So before we really get into this story, we need to dust off our old time machine, take a trip back four or five hundred years. We're not going to do anything else. We're just going to go to Nantucket. Sorry, guys. We're going to wait on all the other stuff we want to do with this time machine. And Jeff, we're not going to see if they actually went to the moon. Okay?

You just got to accept that we did it. I know. All right. And we are going to go to the heyday of the whaling industry, kind of. We're going to talk about that later, actually, and a tiny island off the coast of Massachusetts that for a brief window was one of the major economic centers of the world. And that island's called Nantucket. I will not get out of here. And we're not talking Nantucket Nectar here, the Jews.

We're talking about that. Nantucket. Nantucket was one of the biggest economic centers of the world at one point. It was, this tiny island. Get out of here. I'm not going to get out of here, Jeff. You get right the heck on out of here, Wes. Nantucket was originally colonized by white people in the late 1600s.

Of course, the settlers that showed up. I don't love it. The small grass-covered island sat about 20 miles from the coast of present-day Cape Cod and traditionally had been inhabited by the Wampanoag tribe, or as they were commonly known as the people of the first light. This is the same tribe that is famous for first interacting with a lot of the pilgrims that showed up. You probably think the whales would be better off if they were still running things. Yeah, I do.

I think the world would probably be in a much better place. Mike, what were you going to ask about Nantucket? Is Nantucket a Wampanoag, Wampanoag? Is that the tribe? It is. Is that a native word to their language? It is, and I'm trying to remember what it meant. It kind of sounds like a Christian version of a curse word, like a Southern, like a Dadgummit.

Man, took it. Yeah. Bad gumming. Like a prospector. Let's see, I can find that answer, though, real quick. And it means Far Away Island or Sandy Sterile soil tempting to no one. Okay. Which isn't true.

because of actually where it sat in the Gulf Stream, the weather on Nantucket was really conducive to agriculture. So the earliest settlers saw the island as kind of this grass-covered, wolf-free paradise where they could grow crops and raise livestock in peace. But word actually got out too quickly and it didn't take long before every acre of Nantucket was overgrazed, overtilled, and the residents of the island were forced to look at the sea as a source of their food and livelihood. I thought you're going to say wolves found it. Yeah, the wolves made it out there, and they were like, oh, yeah, we are in the right place. North Atlantic right whales gathered near this island during the winter, and they had been named right whales by settlers because they were considered the right whale to kill.

And in the early 1700s, the people of, yeah, like, they were a whale that had, you know, oil, the blubber was good, and they were easy enough to kill. that's where they're called right whales. I know. It's dumb, but that's what the nickname came from. Okay. We should probably change that name. Wrong whale? Yeah. Because it didn't make sense the other way either, just like a direction.

Yeah, a lot of this stuff doesn't make sense. In the early 1700s, the people of Nantucket learned how to harpoon and kill these whales and then how to process and sell the oil that came from boiling their blubber. And during the early years of this whaling industry, then did. people of the island were completely instrumental in every aspect of whaling, but they were essentially treated like servants by the white inhabitants. It's not like they had a fair shake in this whole industry. Then, in 1712, one of the captains on Nantucket was blown many miles out to sea in a small whaling boat, and he stumbled upon a pot of whales that was very different from the

right whales that they were used to. Wrong whales. He managed to harpoon. He managed to harpoon one of these whales and was thrilled to find that the blubber of the whale was much more rich in oil than the right whales. And even better, this whale had a large reservoir of an incredibly high-quality oil in its rectangular and oversized head that was so accessible

it could be ladled into a cask directly from the whale. Like you could put a bucket into this cavity and just scoop out oil. That's how easy it was to. to get to. You didn't have to process it. You didn't have to boil it. Sperm whales literally have a cavity in their head that is full of oil.

Wow. Like the Avatar whales. Yeah, kind of. It's like the freaking tulcoon, dude. Except this doesn't make you be young forever. I wish it did. It's like avatars based on the world. Based on the world.

There are some parallels. You're eloquent today, Jeff. It's like he got inspired by the world, dude. Yeah. This fluid was called spermaceti because it kind of looked like seminal fluid. Jeff, that's jizz. Yeah. Just so you know, we're talking jizz here.

And that gave rise to the English. No jizz looks the same, though. That's true. Oh, dude. You are the expert. I just thought of, like, the best hustle in the world is you just get your own bucket full of your own fluid and sell it. Say it's from a whale.

And just be like, this is wailed. Fluid. Juice. Yeah. All right. Surely a lonely sailor, too, has tried that back in the day. This gave rise to the English name of the whale, the sperm whale. And whale oil was used for a lot of different things.

Fuel and lamps was one of the primary uses in the early 1800s. But later on, it would be used extensively as lubrication for machinery, for soap making, for candle making, for cosmetics, for other industrial applications. and it was even used to make explosives in World War I. Just like a quick note, we tend to think of whaling kind of peaking in the 1800s and whale oil only like being important back then to light lamps, but we actually found a lot of other uses for the oil throughout the 1900s, and the highest number of whales were actually killed between 1940 and 1975.

sperm whales quickly became the main target of the entire nantucket whaling industry and by 1970 they'd pretty much wiped out all of the local pods of whales and they had to build bigger boats for longer voyages we're going to need a bigger boat I'm sure someone said that at some point you know yeah they did whaling expeditions that only needed small whaling boats and small crews now needed big schooners crews of 20 or more and as more and more whales were extirpated from the Atlantic, the boats were required to travel around the tip of South America, the Cape of Goodhorn, and pushed into the fertile waters of the Pacific.

This meant that trips that used to just last months would now last two or three years, and Nantucket basically became a community of women and children. Oh, utopia, in other words. Oh, because Panama Canal. Panama Canal didn't exist, Mike. It sure didn't. And they couldn't go through the Arctic Passage, the Northwest Passage. Yeah. So then they had to go all the way down there.

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I hardly even remember I'm wearing them. I'm not grinding as much. My teeth feel better. Thank you, Remy, for sponsoring this episode. I think when we used to think of like, you know, back in the olden days when men would leave for years at a time to do different, you know, far away jobs, we probably imagine their partners, these women, that the whalers left behind, like pining for their husbands and really struggling in their absence, but the opposite in Nantucket was actually true.

The wives loved the few months that their husbands returned from their voyages, but they also really reveled in their freedom and their independence while the men were at sea. And there's a really great poem from Eliza Brock, who is a Nantucket Whaling Wailing Wife, and I'm going to read it. She says, Then I'll haste to wed a sailor and send him off. to see, for a life of independence is the pleasant life for me. But every now and then I shall like to see his face, for it always seems to me to beam with manly grace, with his brow so nobly open, his dark and kindly eye. Oh, my heart beats fondly toward him whenever he is nigh. But when he says, goodbye, my love, I'm off across the sea. First I cry for his departure, then laugh because I'm free. Which I really like that poem a lot. They even found some old-timey dildos from

Nantucket that the women called He's at Homes. And that was kind of surprising because the island was really predominantly Quaker, lots of Quakers there, but also not surprising at all, because these are normal physical desires. Sure. What were the dildos made out of? Like plaster. Jeez. So I don't know if they actually made like plaster molds of dicks. Whoa. That's a great business idea. Yeah. That way it's like not cheetah. too if it's a plaster of it. Yep, if it's your, if it's like the exact replica, you're not cheating. I don't think it's cheating anyway.

I don't think that's even close. Yeah. All right. You'd be one of those husbands that ladies would be happy to see you go. It sounds like. You're accusing them of cheating. All right. Whaling was dangerous work, though, and boats were often lost to storms.

Men died of things from like disease and drowning. And about 25% of the women over the age of 23 in Nantucket were what was known as whaling widows. That's kind of a double entendre. Whaling widow? Oh yeah. Because it's like whaling. An interesting tidbit is that sperm whale society really wasn't all that different

from the unique women-dominated society that had been established on Nantucket through whaling. Pods of sperm whales are comprised of interrelated female whales and immature calves. kind of like elk or a lot of these other animals that have similar mating patterns, where when you see a big group, it's almost always just females and then immature young. And the females actually with sperm whales work cooperatively to raise the young in the absence of male whales. And they even take turns standing guard and nursing while other females hunt squid in the deep water. But their dildos would have to be like a redwood tree. They need a lot of plaster for those.

The males leave their pods when they're about six years old. They spend most of their lives in higher latitudes where water is colder and more productive. And they only return to their birth waters when they come back to mate, which generally isn't until they're older than 20. These mating encounters are really brief, Mike. Yeah, no, it's relatable. And after successfully or unsuccessfully mating, Jeff, the males return to other waters to hunt. So it's really a very strange mirror of what was happening in Nantucket, too. The males are gone for these long periods of time.

They're going off to hunt for years at a time. And then they come back to mate and kind of hang out, and then they're gone again. And that essentially is what was going on during the whaling industry in Nantucket. All right. So sorry, there's going to be a lot of history about Nantucket and whaling before we get started just because it really is important to the context of the story. we're not going to get too into the different officer classes and responsibilities on the boat, but basically there's a captain, a first mate, a second mate, boat steers, a steers, a steward,

sailors, and a cabin boy. And I pretty much said those in like order of responsibility and order of like what you'd get paid to. And the sailors are like the biggest group. There's a pretty big jump in overall status between the captain, first mate and second mate, and then everyone else. Nantucketers were generally treated better on the ship and given first stab at whaling assignments and chores while people born off island were treated as outsiders.

And on the Essex, seven of the sailors were black and the predominantly Quaker-led industry really prided themselves on not taking race into account when it came to how they paid their crew. So black sailors would actually get the same percentage as white sailors of their same rank. But that's not to say racism wasn't very prevalent on these boats. and in Nanteket society. They were definitely super racist in their views

toward non-Caucasian people, especially African-Americans. But this was early 1800s America, so I do think it's pretty impressive that they were at least fair in the way that black sailors were paid. Yeah. But I will say, like,

they didn't really have the ability to climb the ladder within the boat very much. I don't think you would ever see black sailors that were like captains or first mates or second mates. So still a bummedial. And, like, they probably weren't honestly given as good opportunity just for general education and, like, things you would need to be able to do to be a captain too. So it'd be hard to. But, like, that's really, like, I'm sure, too, like, not that's, I don't know.

This is pretty civil war. Yeah. Like, they weren't treated as slaves, you know? A lot of times. Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting that they were paid an equal amount. And, like, yeah. A lot of times people with like less opportunity work the hardest.

So like that's just cool to hear, you know. I think knowing what I know about these kinds of voyages out to sea, I think paying everyone an equal wage probably incentivizes people to be doing their best work. You know? And when you're you kind of have each other's lives in your hands in a way, I think it was probably just logistically. And I'm not trying to take away from like the decision to do this because it was the right thing to do. But I also think there was some kind of like pragmatic thought process behind like,

let's make sure everyone's doing as good a job as we can incentivize them to do kind of thing. That's actually, Mike, a perfect segue for what I wanted to talk about next, which was pay. And the men and the boys that did join the crew, and I say boys because the youngest member of the Essex was 14 years old, the people that joined this crew were paid a percentage of the overall haul of whale oil that they brought back. So whatever they got like money wise from that that whale oil, they got a percentage of that. And it was called a lay. And some of those lays were crazy small. On the previous voids of the Essex, the cabin boy, who's kind of lowest on the rung, you know, when it comes to pay,

he had received a lay of one over 198 of the total hall. So one one hundred ninety eighth of the total hall. And that total hall was $26,500. So he walked away with about $150 for two years of his life. So that's about in today's dollars, between $3,000 and $4,000, which is a pretty crazy small wage for two years of backbreaking labor. Yeah, I wouldn't. Yeah, I will say like if you're a cabin boy or a sailor. How much the Louisiana purchase cost, too?

It didn't cost $150. Yeah. A big part of your first voyage is though wasn't necessarily that you were going to make a lot of money. It was gaining experience to move up the ranks. And once you got to those higher ranks, you could really make a living out of whaling. When the whale ship Essex left in August of 1819, it was captained by 29-year-old George Pollard, Jr. This would be his first voyage ever as captain, but his fifth year aboard the Essex. He'd just married a 19-year-old woman the month before,

so leaving this time was going to be a bit harder for him. And he's going to be gone for a while. All right. His first mate was Owen Chase, who was 22 years old, very cocky. In the book, he came off kind of arrogant and pretty bossy and maybe even a little abusive to some of the men under his command. There is a movie about this, and he's played by Chris Hemsworth, and he's kind of like the hero in that.

just so you know, if you've seen that movie and you're listening to this, it is very, very different from the real account. I don't know why they made it so different, but it's very different. So don't put a lot of stock into it. I don't want to smear Owen Chase too badly. The book doesn't paint the best picture of him, at least in the first half. But he does seem like he was a very confident and very experienced whaler for just being 22 years old. He would yell and swear at the men for even just small mistakes.

And a lot of these are like little teenage Quaker kids. So like swearing was a big shock for them. This was a big change for their normal day-to-day lives. Sailor talk, though. Yeah, you got it. You got to put a little swearing in your talk if you're a sailor. Whaling. The second mate was 26-year-old Matthew Joy.

And as I mentioned, the youngest member of the ship was 14-year-old cabin boy Thomas Nickerson. And they talk about him a lot in the book because he wrote one of the accounts from the Whale Ship Essex, and the book really draws on it because he's the most unbiased of the people that wrote about this. So he is like kind of a main character in the book. So that's kind of our establishing picture of this whole disaster and of Nantucket and the whaling industry. We're going to talk a little bit more about it, but we're going to get into the journey. Are you guys ready? Oh, yeah.

Yes. All right. The beginning of the voyage was pretty rocky for the Essex. and that's because they clumsily left the harbor, and many of the sailors aboard were really inexperienced or green and didn't know how to work these intricate sails and lines and ropes and workings of the ship. And this clunky start was really embarrassing for Captain Pollard and first mate Chase because a lot of the old retired whalers and ship owners would gather on this hill above town

with their spy glasses to watch the boat as they left, and they were no doubt like mocking the Essex. as they pulled out of the port at Nantucket, which is really embarrassing if you're a new captain. As they set out across the ocean, a lot of the men got seasick to begin with, and the way that Nantucketers would try to fix seasickness was really interesting to me.

They would tie a piece of pork fat to a string. They would have the seasick man swallow it while they held the end of the string, and then they would pull it back up and make him swallow it again and again and again until the symptoms of sea sickness went away. So I was. Yeah.

What's the thought on that? It's one of those things that you like wonder how they came up with that. Like why that was what they settled on, you know? Right. But we should try it when we go to Antarctica. It's like, you know, you stub your toe and then someone like punches you in the face to make your toe stop hurting it. Right. It's like.

I hope it was a praying. played on them by some of the Native American tribes people who were just like, oh, yeah, ancient wisdom, this helps every single time, just do this, and they're all just laughing at us. 50 years later, they're like, they're still doing it. All right, so despite this bad start, a few days into the voyage, the Essex was actually making really good time. And that was because Captain Pollard had said that he wanted to fly some extra sails that kind of were a little bit risky and they made you faster but they were really hard to take down in a sudden storm so they could be really dangerous and that's exactly what happened to the essex they hit a sudden squall in the

Atlantic and the inexperienced captain and crew made some huge mistakes that led to the ship being essentially completely horizontal in the water for a few scary minutes before she ride it herself up so like the edges of their mass were like dipping in the water they were so far tipped over and they kind of all thought that they were going to capsize. Kind of like Hussein Komodo for a minute. It caused a lot of damage, and the biggest problem was that they had lost two of their five whale boats, and a third was heavily damaged. So they had five whale boats aboard, and two of them were completely lost, and a third was heavily damaged. So, like, once they kill a whale, the whale needs a whole boat to be able to get it back?

Kind of, but what these boats were for is they were the boats, the small boats that they would get in to actually pursue the whale. Oh, sure. And you needed at least three whale boats to be operational, and the Essex was down to two. So they managed to mostly repair the damage ones. They now did kind of have three, but they really didn't know if they felt confident going out and hunting whales. So Captain Pollard had an important decision to make. it was either turn around and go back to Nantucket, kind of with his tail between his legs, to get their boats repaired, or continue on to the Azores, or Cabo Verge, Cape Verde,

where hopefully they could buy another couple whale boats. So those are some islands that are kind of off the coast of Africa, and that's the direction they were headed at this point. And the captain said, you know what, we're going to go back to Nantucket. And first mate Chase said, no, no, no, let's just go. We'll find some whale boats. and he actually managed to convince Captain Pollard to continue going. And there was no whaleboats in the Azores,

but they were able to buy a bunch of provisions. And then in Cabo Verge, they got lucky because another whale ship had crashed there, and they actually were willing to sell them one of their whaleboats. So they went on, went onward. Just a quick explanation of kind of their route that they would do is they would go out to like the Azores and Cabo Verge on the western coast of Africa, and then they would kind of scoot down

through the Gulf Stream and stuff to the southern tip of South America, and they were kind of heading up toward Galapagos is where they're trying to go. So it's a pretty big voyage, and it was actually more than three months into their voyage when they saw their first whale. They had a really big dry spell

and didn't really know what was happening, but actually whaling vessels all over the Atlantic were having the same problem, but they finally saw whales in between, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, and they finally got to quickly assemble the whale boats, get into the water, and hunt some sperm whales. And this is we're going to get into, we're going to get into some of the gross details here, but it is important kind of what they would do when they would hunt sperm whales.

So three months is, is that just because the whaling had become so ubiquitous that there just weren't many whales left to sea? Yeah. And like the Atlantic is kind of where all of these major, you know, You know, whaling hubs had access to the Atlantic, ready access to the Atlantic. So it was the ocean that got whaled out the first. You know, it got like depleted pretty quickly. They're just hit in the same spots.

Yeah, like people from the UK, people from the U.S., people from all parts of Europe, Africa, South America. They were all whaling the Atlantic mostly. Spain? Spain. Spain? What about Spain? Portia. Portugal. I said Europe.

Don't forget about Portugal. I won't. I never would. So basically, when they saw sperm whales, the men would rig the boats, quickly sharpen the harpoons and lances, then launch the boats and row toward the whales. The captain and the first and second mates would be standing on the stern of the boats and each of the three whaling boats, and then they would direct the men where to row because the rowers would be facing backward and not toward the front of the boat. all but three of the men from the ship would be in the whale boats and the three men that stayed behind were kind of responsible for taking care of the main ship. They'd race on the water when they're rowing

and they would close this mile between them and the whales pretty quickly. They generally launch the boats when they're about a mile away and experience whalers would have a really good knowledge of when whales were about to dive and then when they would come up, where they would come up after they dove. So they would get themselves to the exact right place to harpoon when the whales surfaced again. And the book talks a lot about how they would kind of get blood less during this part.

And the author even describes their whale hunting fever as like almost erotic how intense they would get about killing whales. Yeah. These dudes really loved killing whales. So on this particular day, Chase's boat was the first to get to this whale. And the harpooner now had this job of driving the harpoon deep enough into the whale that it wouldn't dislodge. This harpoon is connected to this really long length of rope.

And basically once the whale is harpooned, it's going to drag the boat. And they call this an Antucket sleigh ride until it exhausted itself. And then once it's tired enough and that whale kind of surfaces again, the leader of that whale boat would take a 12-foot lance with a pedal-shaped blade and would thrust it into the whale trying to reach vital organs for a kill. This really is very sexual. all the terminology and the imagery and everything. Like a Nantucket Slay ride is probably something else now.

Yeah, for sure. Someone get on Urban Dictionary and see what that means nowadays. I'm sure it's something. But yeah, this is the worst part is they would take this lance and they're trying to find a vital organ to kill the whale. And that's easier said than done. And sometimes they would have to thrust over a dozen times to kill the whale, which leads to a ton of blood and oil on the surface as this whale is thrashing.

around, and I'm going to read a quick selection from the book that's kind of dark, but I think it paints a good picture of what this looked like. When the lance finally found its mark, the whale would begin to choke on its own blood, and its spout transformed into a 15 to 20-foot geyser of gore that prompted the mate to shout, chimneys of fire. As the blood rained down on them, the men took up the oars and backed furiously away, then paused to watch as the whale went into what's known as a flurry, beating the water with its tail, snapping the air with its jaws, even as it regurgitated large chunks of fish and squid.

The creature began to swim in an ever-tightening circle, then just as abruptly as the attack had begun with the first thrust of the harpoon, it ended. The whale fell motionless and silent, a giant black corpse floating fin up in a slick of its own blood and vomit. So it's not pleasant. No. It's sad.

It makes sense, though. Like, it's the biggest. animals in the world so it's like you can't just get like one of those things from no country for old men that kill cows yeah that's true like you got it it's got yeah you got to get some organs you have to flip a coin first you're like calling the whale doesn't know how to speak what's it gonna say make one of those like 20 minute long songs that they sing that's not gonna help After they killed the whale, it'd be dragged back to the ship where the blubber would be removed and cut into small squares and boiled. The fire would first be lit with wood, but then they would take this crispy whale skin and feed the fire with it.

And that would produce this terrible smell and a bunch of really black, oily smoke. They then cut open the whale's head and they would access this case of the whale, which was this cavity that had up to 500 gallons of spermaceti, that oil. and it's this really high quality and it actually solidify a little bit when it was exposed to air. But they would literally get inside of this cavity with buckets and like bucket this oil out into casks. The final thing that was kind of crazy

that they would look for in these whales is they would probe its intestines because whales that were like constipated or had intestinal problems had this ashy opaque substance It's called amburgis, amburgress in their intestines, and they used it in perfume, and it was really valuable. It was like worth its weight in gold. So they would look for that, too.

Yeah. One whale would provide about- Back in the day, I feel like perfume really gave me an advantage. Yeah. No, I'm saying, like, nowadays it's like you can get cheap stuff, you can get expensive stuff. It's hard to notice the difference sometimes. But like back in the day, if you had, like, you had. like an expensive perfume, you were turning heads.

That's true. Yeah. Everyone must have been super gross if the remains of whale intestines made you smell better. Smelt great. Than before. Yeah. Filthy. Yeah.

I don't know. I won't ever try it. No. Personally. No. Well, they still use some weird things in perfumes like civet. Yeah. The civet.

Clans and, yeah. Yeah. One whale, though, would provide about 40 barrels of oil. and the men on the Essex were hoping to get about 1,400 barrels during their entire voyage. So about 35 whales is what they were hoping to kill. There was obviously a lot of spillage, a lot of blood, so the boat would pretty much look like this blood-covered inferno by the end of processing a whale. It would sometimes take up to three days just to process one whale,

and it was a very dirty business. Anyway, on this day, Chase's boat pulled up next to this whale, his inexperienced harpooner is about to take his first throw when suddenly all of these men are thrown more than 10 feet up into the air the boat explodes around them and that's because another whale had hit the boat from below with its massive tail and the men were uninjured but they're now just clinging to the wreckage of this boat and waiting for rescue from the other whale boats.

Wow. And while a whale had never attacked like a big boat before they did often, you know, in their rush to get away from these men, they would sometimes destroy the smaller whaleboats. And so this isn't like totally unheard of. This episode is brought to you by Coast. If your business hasn't changed how you pay for gas and materials, you're losing tens of thousands a year to fraud, hidden fees, and hours spent on paperwork. Coast Pay eliminates fraud, saves you money, and automates all of your accounting, all in a card that can be used anywhere Visa is accepted. Coast Pay is the modern fuel card and expense management tool built for fleets.

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That's a good question. Like you would think that they would have as much meat as they could ever want. Yeah, just kind of gross, but yeah, at least you're not starving. I know that whale meat is pretty high in mercury, but I still think you can eat it in a pinch. So I don't know. I don't know why they didn't eat more whale. But the waters got really cold and rough as they approached Cape Horn. They were hit by some really strong Westernlies as they came around the tip of South America. They had to fight that wind for a full month before they were finally able to make it around the Cape, which must have just been miserable.

And they finally make it around, though. And when they do, they run into these other whale ships and they get some really bad news. and that bad news is that everyone on the Pacific side of South America is also having a really hard time finding whales and killing whales. And this used to kind of be their honeyhole. This used to be where you would be able to fill your boat with whale oil. Whale oil is really hard to say. Try saying you once.

Whale oil. It's not easy. Has anyone ever done that joke to say whale oil beef hooked really fast? whale oil beef hooked what's that I don't get that joke beef hooked wow beefed

yeah okay I got it yeah well I just did it to you so now you can say someone's done it to you congratulations is that an actual joke

you've heard yeah that's the thing people uh huh whale oil yeah it's like an Irish man saying I don't know it's a weird it's a real weird

I'll have to think about that one yeah in an Irish voice it'd be real funny Anyway, you know, rather than kind of realize, hey, maybe we need to press pause on whaling because we're not finding whales anymore, what they decided to do was look for a new whaling ground and pushed further out into the Pacific. And there was this tail of this captain who had pushed about a thousand miles from the coast

of Peru and had found tons of sperm whales. And he named this area the offshore ground. So Pollard and his crew decided to give it a shot. They headed up the coast of South America, the western coast. They managed to kill about 11 sperm whales by the time they reached what is now southern coast of Ecuador. And they went ashore for a little bit. It was like paradise for them. So what's like their goal?

35 whales. Yeah. But when they got to Ecuador, they went on land and it's kind of paradise. There's fruit everywhere. It's warm. It's beautiful. You guys have been to Ecuador. I love it.

And one of their men actually ends up jumping ship. One of the sailors is just like, hey, I'm out of here. And I don't blame him. It sounds like I probably would want to do the same. But it was really bad news for the Essex because they really don't have extra guys. And it meant they would only be able to leave two people on the whale ship when they went whaling or on the main ship when they went whaling. All right. They kill a few more whales on the way to Galapagos. And then when they get to Galapagos, they started a different kind of slaughter. And what they would do, as we learned in Galapagos, is the men would go out and collect hundreds of live, tortoises from the islands that they would keep alive on the ships as this kind of sort of long-term food source. The tortoises were really easy to catch, and they'd sometimes provide hundreds of pounds of meat, so they were just considered this kind of free food for sailors, and the men would go out hiking, and they would tie the legs of the tortoise together, and then actually, like, hoist them on to their backs, and then backpack them to the ship. Wow. This wholesale tortoise slaughter

led to the extinction of several of the different tortoise species in the Galapagos and the near extinction of the others. It was also insanely cruel because they thought that tortoises could go weeks or even months without food or water. So they didn't feed or give water to these tortoises on board and they would just kind of slowly wander around and like lick all the different planks trying to get food and water. So these tortoises were just starving slowly aboard these ships. Dude. Which is pretty sad. Yeah. So while the Essex was hunting tortoises on one of the islands,

one of the men, Thomas Chapel, who's a bit of a prankster, decided he would set fire to the dry brush on the island while the men were hunting, which ended up leading to a huge wildfire. Yeah. He almost killed the entire crew. Dude. And he burned this entire island and likely killed thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of reptiles and birds.

And that island was one of the first islands to live. lose all of its tortoises. Wow. Which is wild. Yeah. So Nickerson, this little cabin boy actually, like, loved the wildlife of the Galapagos, and he was one of the only people that seemed to kind of have some remorse about all of this.

Yeah. All right. That one guy would have been, like, a streamer nowadays, huh? Yeah. And he probably would have gotten, like, hella clout for doing that. Yeah. You guys know kind of ocean sizes relative to each other? Yeah.

Kind of. What's the biggest? Pacific. Pacific. And is it significantly bigger than the other oceans? Good amount. Yeah. It sure is.

It's actually kind of hard to grasp just how vast the Pacific Ocean is. And I didn't fully understand it until I read this book. It's about 12,000 miles from the shore of Columbia to Indonesia. which is crazy. Dude. Yeah, when you like spin the globe, if you see a globe and you spin it to be looking at just like the other side of the planet Earth, it's all just the Pacific Ocean and then you spin it around to see the land basically.

It's pretty wild. I think growing up for whatever reason, it kind of seemed like crossing the Atlantic was similar to crossing the Pacific and it's not. Like the Atlantic is a short hop compared to crossing the Pacific. They're vastly different oceans. and on November 20th, 1819, the men of the Essex were about 1,500 nautical miles west of Galapagos, and about as far from land as you can be in the world. So like from any island, from any kind of land, they were kind of out in the middle of everything.

Four days previous, they'd hunted some whales, and once again a whale surfaced under Chase's boat and left the men clinging to wreckage. Once again, they had to abandon their hunt. So on the 20th, on a bright clear day with very little wind, they spotted whales and they launched the whale boats. Chase led his boat to a spot where he thought the whales would surface, and sure enough, his experience once again proved really valuable. The whales surfaced right next to his boat, a little too close even. He had taken over the harpooning, and when he threw this harpoon, the whale slapped its tail against his boat and opened up a big hole in the side of the boat. So immediately water starts pouring in

He grabs a hatchet He cuts the rope on the harpoon And then orders his men to stuff their jackets Into this hole so they can get back to the ship They go back to the ship They lift their boat up onto the deck Where he starts nailing some canvas over the hole And we're going to pin this for next episode

But he's really pounding this hammer Into the canvas on the side of this boat And that echo is reverberating through the water. Both Captain Pollard and second-maid Joy had harpooned whales, and they were being taken on these Nantucket sleigh rides. So Chase is kind of pissed that he's once again out of the game, and he's back on the S-6 trying to fix his boat.

He has little Thomas Nickerson, the 14-year-old. I think he's 15 now. Take over the helm of the S-6 while he's working on this boat, and he's having Nickerson steer the ship toward where Pollard and Joy are. And while he's doing that, they all look down in the water and they see something strange. Cthulhu. And what they see is a whale. Oh.

Yeah, what was your guess? One of the ancient ones, Cthulhu? Chathulu. That would be, yeah. You know, maybe whales are the ancient ones. You'd think they would not find it strange at this point. A whale. He's like, whoa.

A whale. You're right, Jeff. But it wasn't just any whale. This was the biggest sperm whale that any of the male that any of the male. men had ever seen, easily longer than 85 feet. And there's a reason for that. They were seeing a male sperm whale, which they didn't often see. And the strange thing about this particular whale was that its head was mostly out of the water. It was about 100 yards away, and it was pointing straight toward the ship. And generally, when they approached pods of whales with the larger ship,

with the Essex, the whales would panic and flee. But this one was just kind of floating there. It was blowing its blowhole toward them. And then it dove and surfaced even closer to the ship about 35 yards away. Pretty unsettling. Yeah, like blowing its blowhole aggressively has to feel a little weird. You know. Yeah.

It's like Brad Pitt eating his steak and Mr. and Mrs. Smith? The men thought this was curious, but they weren't really nervous or scared at all, because after all these years of whaling, no ship had ever purposely been sunk by a whale. But then this whale did something that really actually did alarm the men aboard the Essex. It started pumping its huge tail back and forth and then side to side, and then it shot through the water toward the ship, leaving a big wake of water on either side of its head. So it's aimed straight toward the port side of the ship, which is the last. side if you're facing the front and it's leaving just like a wake of water as it's shooting across the surface of the water it kind of did the cartoon move where your legs start spinning before you actually start moving or like you wind up a punch the donkey con yeah uh chase only had time to

yelled to Nickerson, pull the helm hard up when the whale crashed into the side of the boat, and the noise was so loud that it drowned out everything else. Tortoises went skidding across the deck, all of the men crashed to the boards, and then they slowly got up and stared at each other in amazement, like they had all just kind of lived the same nightmare and were waking up from it. A sperm whale had just deliberately rammed their boat. But this whale wasn't done. sperm whales, as we mentioned, have the largest brain of any animal on earth, and they're also the largest tooth predator on earth. So this, like, you know, we know that orcas are the number one kind of apex predator on earth,

but sperm whales are bigger and they are toothed whales, but they're mostly hunting like giant squid and other things. Yeah. It's impossible to know exactly what this particular whale was thinking or why it had decided to ram the whale ship repeatedly. We're going to talk about that a little bit in part two. But the fact that it didn't immediately swim away after the first collision makes me think that it now at this point is enraged. It wants to like another shot.

That first collision could have been a weird accident or like a miss, you know, just didn't know what it was what it was. But now I think this whale is pissed. The men feel the whale bump the bottom of the ship as it passes underneath the Essex. And then it tears off the false keel as it passes. by, which is this huge board on the bottom of the ship. And then it does something even stranger. The huge whale surfaces right next to the ship and floats with the entire top of its body exposed.

Its head is near the bow or the front of the ship and its tail is all the way down near the stern. So it's a big whale and it's kind of just showing the men like how big it is. It's floating right next to the boat. Almost acting like it's like a mating opponent or something. Yeah, which it could have thought. And again, we'll get into that and why the hammering was important in part two. But it floats there long enough that the men are thinking maybe it's stunned itself from the collision or something.

And Chase grabs his harpoon. And he's thinking, okay, I'm going to harpoon this whale from the Essex. And he's ready to throw the harpoon when he notices the whale's tail is dangerously close to their rudder. And we all know what happens when whales rip off rudders on this show, because we've talked about or doing it. It like kills your boat if you lose your rudder. You can't go anywhere at that point. It's a big deal. And Chase knew that and so he really didn't want to lose the rudder out in the middle of the Pacific and he decides not to harpoon this whale. And this is a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life and through the horrors of the months ahead. So pretty much

a third of a sperm whale's body is its head. And the head is cushioned by this huge cavity of oil. So really, they're really good at ramming stuff if they have to without really feeling much. And it didn't take long for the sperm whale to be ready to fight again. It swam about 600 yards away, and the men in the Essex watched as whale started thrashing in the water, snapping its jaws with rage and fury, as Chase would say in his diary. And then about 100 yards away, it swam perpendicular to the bow of the boat and then lined up with the Essex again. Meanwhile, Chase is like yelling at the to get the pumps ready in case they were taking on water and he's not really paying attention to the whale, but he really should have been. Because at this point, it's speeding through the water toward the

Essex faster than before. It looks like a huge 85-foot torpedo moving across the surface of the water. Chase would later say that it was one of the most terrifying things he had ever seen and that it was leaving a whitewater wake more than 40 feet across as it barreled toward them. What? He yelled at Nickerson to change course and try to avoid the whale, but it was too late. A huge shattering crash rocks the boat, and even though the men were prepared this time, they all fell to the deck again, and they felt their ship being pushed through the water. The whale had lodged its head into the hole in the boat,

and it was pushing the entire ship through the water as it pumped its tail back and forth. It's pushing so hard that the boat is starting to list all the way to the side, and the rails on the opposite side of the boat are like there's water coming up over them because the whale's pushing so hard and fast through the water. Then in just an instant the whale disengages, it swims off, they never see it again, and one of the men yell that the ship is filling with water. Chaos ensues and everyone's scrambling to get the whale boats ready to get off the boat, but one of the black crewmen, a steward named William Bond,

had the foresight to run to the captain's quarter, and grab some navigational equipment, and that's a decision that would ultimately save some of these men's lives. Hell yeah. They load whatever they can into chests. They load those chests into the whaleboat. They get the whaleboat into the water, just as the Essex starts to list dangerously to the port side.

And as they get into the whaleboat and clear the ship, the Essex groans and capsizes as they all watch in horror. This scene was very surprising to the men out in the other two whaleboats, because they had no idea what was going on. And one second the Essex is there, and the next second, it's gone. Yeah. So their entire lives are in this boat,

and they watch it just disappear. And they release their whales. They both were on whales. They cut their harpoons, and they paddle back to the ship. And as they get closer, they can make out the shape of the ship, the Essex floating on her side,

and the whale boat would chase his men nearby. They pull up, and all three of the loaded whale boats just stare in stunned silence at the Essex. And Pollard is so overcome by grief that he falls to his seat. And then he finally looks up at Chase and says, my God, Mr. Chase, what is the matter? Which is like, you know, I think a phrase that's changed in its meaning over the time. But he was like asking what happened.

And Chase replies, we have been stove by a whale, or like sunk by a whale essentially. The 20 men of the whale ship Essex had just made history as the only whale ship to ever be attacked and sunk by a whale, and now they were floating in the Pacific basically as far from land as you can possibly be in the world, and they had just survived a traumatic and harrowing event. But their real trauma and pain and horror was really just beginning, and that's what we're going to talk about in episode two. No, Wes. Come on, dude. Please.

I'll do anything. A little spoiler. These guys are going to run out of food aside from each other. Whoa. All right. Maybe I can wait. ED doesn't mean that your love life is over. It means you're just getting started.

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All right. You guys got any questions before we get to our categories? It's kind of a long story. Yeah. Do you think maybe... I'm glad you've bared with me. We could use some of this whale oil in the NFL players that wear those safety helmets. Sounds like it's a pretty good cushion for the head.

They're huge heads. Those helmets look like sperm whale heads. They're huge. A third of the body. It might be more fun if, like, instead of it. sticky gloves. We gave them like oil gloves. The ball's just like slipping in the air. I like that idea. I will say if you were interested in this stuff, this book is so good. It's a great book. It really goes into a lot more

detail about the men, about like Nantucket. It's just a really interesting time in the world's history. So I do really highly recommend reading the book because I'm really glossing over a lot of fun details and horrific details. Okay, anything else before we move on? No. Would they kill orcas? I don't think so. I think they really focused on like the ones that they knew they were going to get enough oil for it to be worth it.

And sperm whales were really like the best. They were kind of cream of the crop when it came to whale oil. Whale oil oil. Yeah. And they were called sperm whales because their oil loo. look like sperm. The oil in their case or whatever, that cavity in their head looked like sperm. Wow.

We talked about that for like 10 minutes, so we should definitely remember that fact. Yeah. You said the fact. We talked about sperm for like 10 minutes. That's true. Good point. Making sure. Yep.

Another day on the job. Because that's a weird thing to name one of the coolest animals because of. I know. There's a lot of animals when you figure out what they were named after. It's kind of like, why don't we rename that? You know, like sloth bears and sperm whales. You would have thought a sperm whale would have been like, yo, Aquaman. You just like change this name.

Give me a new name. It's Aquaman whose name in animals these days? Well, he probably could. Or he's like an ambassador to people. Yeah, he's the in between. Sure. But like Aquaman would have to tell them, Your name is sperm whale

That's true He probably lies to these animals Yeah, he's like no you're the super Super sick whale You're the best Godzilla whale All right First category That'd be cool

All right Your first category is Favorite sperm whale from pop culture I'll go first Okay I'm going to choose Pearl Oh SpongeBob

Yeah It's Mr. Crabbs' daughter in SpongeBob, which... That's right. Huge head. Who would he have had sex with? Perl? Crab?

No. Oh, to produce Pearl. Yeah. I think it was an adoption situation. Maybe. Right. Wes, what's one characteristic of Mr. Crabbs? He likes to yell.

No, kind of. Yeah. What is it? What is it? I'd say he loves... He loves money. Money. Oh, yeah, he does love money, doesn't he?

That's true. His pupils always turn into dollar signs. He does. He yells, though. He yells a lot. All right. My favorite sperm whale is going to be Laboon. The one piece answer, predictable, but it's got to be a sperm whale from all the characteristics I can identify.

Huge head, the little lower jaw with the teeth. I think sperm whales are commonly like whales, you know, in cartoons and stuff. Like, if you draw a whale, it's often a sperm whale. But my favorite is Monstro from Pinocchio, like a really scary sperm whale from a very early animation. Yeah, cool. Classic. All right, I also ask you guys what the most sexual... Sorry, I keep interrupting you, but I need to talk about the Polly Shore Pinocchio.

And in the trailer, he's like, what father? When can I leave to be on my own? I've got the whole world to see. Is it a serious movie? It's just like an animated... another animated Pinocchio movie. It's from that year when there were like five Pinocchio movies that came out. Okay.

I think I did see. But everybody, I urge you to go. I'll put in a little voice clip right here so you all can hear just how funny this line delivery from Pauly Shore is. It's the best. It's the best. All right. Category number two, the most sexual or horniest animal name because, you know, sperm whale is kind of up there. So were you guys able to find any weird horny animal names?

I went with the spiny lump sucker. Yeah, I considered that one. Yeah. It's like horny adjacent. It's not like all the way, but you know, you can use your imagination. My mind just went to like the tits. The birds that we call tits, like yellow-breasted tits or whatever. Yeah.

I like that. Tufted tit tyrant is a bird we might see down in southern Argentina. Triple Tee. Whoa. I picked the slippery dickfish, which was definitely stood out among the other ones that I found. It's an actual fish, slippery dick. Okay, we're just going to leave that behind. We're going to do a real quick where Jeff and Mike paying attention.

Oh, no. I got real sleepy halfway through. Well, so, yeah, I know you weren't paying attention because I said they were going to kill about 35 whales. And two minutes later, you asked me. how many whales they had to kill. But that's not one of the questions. Let's do it. So whoever loses we pick their first movie on our flight to Antarctica.

I like that, that penalty. Do you guys like that? Are you good with that? Okay. Who wants the first question? Jeff. Jeff. What year did the Whaleship Essex leave Nantucket?

1819. Correct. Good job. It's one for Jeff. Yeah. Mike, how old was Captain Pollard when they left? 26? 29.

Oh, shoot. Oh, sorry, I should have let you try and steal that. Jeff, would have you been able to steal it? Yeah. I think he probably, he dug that other answer out of the recesses of his brain. I'll give you a chance. How old was Owen Chase the first mate, Jeff? Is this your steal?

Okay, if I get this right, Mike? Yeah, yeah, whatever. 23 22 very close yeah okay Jeff your second question I did not

what modern day country were the men in when one of their crew jumped ship Bill play back where he says 23 okay Bill please play back

where I said how old Owen Chase is Jeff what modern day country were they in when one of their crew jumped ship that's easy Ecuador

Ecuador correct Mike, what is the name of the cape at the very southern tip of South America? Cape horn. Correct. Which, if you say it really fast, it kind of sounds like you're saying gay porn. It does. Cape horn, gay porn. You had a lot of really fastisms on this episode.

All right. If you say gay porn, do you ever think of Cape horn? That's all I can think about, yeah. It's the tip of South America. When someone's like, yeah, I was watching gay porn, you're like, Like, you were thinking about the Cape Horn? Me too. What is it?

All right. Jeff, how many total men were aboard the Essex when they first set sail? This is your last official question, too, just so you know. 23. Mike? I got 23. You want to steal? 21?

Correct. Oh, man. It's tied up. Matt or Mike, you have a. chance here to take the lead. Matt? How many total whale... Matt?

That's crazy. This was an episode. That took a long time. How many total whale boats did they have when they left Nantucket? Three. Whale boats. Jeff, would you like to steal?

Yeah. Five. Five, correct. Why do they have that many? Three broke. They needed a spare. They needed two spares. Yeah. They needed three operational ones,

but they wanted to have spares too. That's lit. All right. So Jeff's winning three. to two. Sparewit. We do this, what's his name? Gandalf's, the other guy, the other wizard.

Saramon? No, the one in Harry Potter. Dumbledore. Dumbledore rules. You're doing Dumbledore rules? Yep. So bonus question. Bonus question.

Actually, you know what? Let's do it. This just ties it up if you get it and you both have to pick a movie for each other. If Mike gets it, if Jeff gets it, he won't. too. No, this is a bonus question. So you both have had three questions. You're winning three to two. So if Mike gets this, you both get to pick a movie for each other. If Jeff gets it, he wins. What species of whale, and don't yell out an answer because I'm going to get specific here, what species of whale was their main target before they started hunting sperm whales, and I will only accept their full name, because I did say it at the very beginning. That's impossible. Right whales. Think about where they were found when they first started hunting them.

Nantucket, right whales. North Atlantic right whales. And I did say that. I was careful to say the whole name. So Jeff wins. You get a pick Mike's first movie. I look forward to seeing what it is. Yeah.

Good game. All right. I don't know how I got 1819. That's pretty wild. That's a great poll. It's really excited for you there. I knew it was the 1800s is where I was at. Yeah.

So you had 100 years to play around with in your brain. I did say it like three times, so maybe it just got, you know, it got put in there. But, all right, another question for you guys. What's your favorite historical nonfiction book? Because this one is up there for me. Oh, that's a toughie. Oh, man, that's tough. I can lead off because I have my answer.

I really like Unbroken. which was about Louis Lamparini or whatever his name is. He's the guy that, like, got shot down in the ocean, survived floating on the ocean, and then survived a Japanese POW camp. It's just a really inspiring story, I thought. I really enjoyed that one. What was the substance called from the whale brains? It was like spermarite, spermaceti?

Spermissetti. That also sounds kind of like an Italian surname. Sparmermercetti. I'm going to go with I just finished actually a really, really great one called Madhouse at the end of the earth. It's about a really awfully organized and executed voyage down to Antarctica by the Belgica. So that one's just top of mind just because I finished it recently. But I'll go with the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shearer.

He was a journalist who's on the ground before the U.S. was even involved in World War II. It just has a really unique boots on the ground kind of perspective of what was happening in Europe during the rise and the fall of the Third Reich. It's a real tough book to walk around with in public because it always just has a giant swastika on it. Like no version of the book has ever been printed to my knowledge that just doesn't have like a massive glowing red and black swastika just plastered all over the front of it. But awesome book. Really, really cool. A little dated here and there. But it's got, I don't know.

It's just a really unique perspective on the whole situation. And I really, I think it's valuable insight. Yeah. When we moved into our house, like, I got to tour it before the other people moved out. And there was like a few too many Nazi books, you know, where it's like, if there's a couple, you're like, oh, we're dealing with the history buff here that likes to kind of read about everything. There was just a couple too many where it was kind of like, hmm. Yeah, four or five, you're starting to wonder. Yeah.

Mine is mine cumpf. No, it's not. No, mine, I don't know. I really loved escape from Camp 14, but like from a North Korean prisoner that escaped. But then I've kind of looked back and seen that a lot of that stuff's been disproven. So it's kind of hard to,

there's probably not completely, nonfiction anymore. I like No Man knows my history. I like Hiroshima is a good one. Just hearing the account of everything in Hiroshima

and the new kit. Okay. A couple. All right. Jeff, do you got a couple listener questions for us? Yes. Read them.

Please. Do you want me to start out with my hottest one? Yeah. All right, this is the hardest one. Cat 3 Anderson asks, what's my favorite animal? Like, what's their favorite animal? Their favorite animal?

I don't know. What's their name? Is there an answer? Cat, but with a K. Oh, okay. I'm going to go with leopard. Oh, we're just supposed to tell them what their favorite animal is? Yep.

Leopard. I'll stick by Mike. I don't think we can give her three favorite animals. Sure, leopard. Yeah. Because K-Kat, maybe that's Catherine Hepburn, and bringing up baby. It's got to be that.

All right. Ph. F. Silva asks, Hey, guys, did you see there's a movie called Grizzly Night inspired by Night of the Grizzly? Yeah. Kind of a funny story is our network was reaching out to us about potentially making a movie about Night of the Grizzlies, like being producers on a movie

that would be a dramatic retelling of Night of the Grizzlies and we're kind of starting to talk to them about that, and then we saw the trailer for that movie. So it's kind of a bummer, and it doesn't look great to me, but enjoy it if you see it. You think that's a funny story? Yeah, I guess.

It's not really funny, but ironic. Maddie bolster ass. The Olympics have been amazing. What's a sport that should be added? Snowball fight. Let's say winter. Oh, I like that. Are you kidding?

How is that not been at it yet? Yeah. You could go like one-on-one like solos and then doubles and then team. It could be like a whole swath of events to be at it. Yeah. I don't have a better answer than that. I would like to just see like long slide. Like you just run on the ice and you slide as far as you can.

Ooh, that's like normal shoes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want, I like the, I really like, I always forget what it's called, but the cross-country. skiing with shooting. Biathlon.

Biathlon. So I want like the snowboard half pipe with shooting. Yeah. But it's like a rocket watcher. It's an RPG. No, no, no. But you do like a backflip while you're like shooting targets. Yeah.

Up, that down. I like that. Everyone has to like watch behind bulletproof glass. I genuinely don't know which of these three I'd rather attend. He's also. The sliding one would be fun because it's kind of like, I wonder if I could beat that. You know, like you go out and test it. Well, that's like the secret sauce of the Olympics is a lot of the events you kind of secretly think like handball.

It's like, of course I couldn't be as good as they are a handball. But somewhere in the back of my brain, I'm like, I could be the worst person on a handball team and go to the Olympics. I could be the guy laying down on the two-man. The two-man loose. You're just patting for the other guy. It is though, like, it's always fascinating to me to think, how did this person decide to devote their entire life to curling? You know, like, what happened at what stage in their life where this just became their sole focus, you know? It's fascinating.

Mike always has, like, maybe it's a little bit more rational for him because he was, like, a great high school athlete. But he always has this, like, irrational thought every once in a while. where he's like, dude, why don't we just play basketball for two years straight and then go play in Europe or something like that? Yeah, go playing the Euro League. Or like for the Shanghai Sharks or something. I kind of feel like if you said curling, I would be like, you know what? Maybe. Maybe if we do curling for three years straight, we might actually like.

We could do it. Yeah. Des Avery asked, what do you think is the most misunderstood animal in attack history? So, like, what's the most misunderstood animal attack? Yeah. I would say venomous snakes. I think, like, I think there are still... No, I think there's asking for, like, a specific animal attack story.

Oh, like, one attack story? Yeah. It sounded me like they were saying, like, the most misunderstood, like, type of animal for, like, attacks. We do both. Okay. So for the way that I interpret, I'd say venomous snakes, because I think there are a lot of people out there that still think snakes. like seek people out to bite them, like they're attacking people, and every venomous snake bite is defensive.

They don't, they're not trying to kill us or eat us or anything. But as far as like a single story that might be misunderstood, maybe tried well, just because like so many people know about it and so many people still think that he was like doing good out there, that he was like protecting the bears. Yeah. Yeah. Steve Irwin

Aren't people So mad at like stingrays Probably Yeah Maybe he antagonized The stingray Do we know Well you know

We're gonna do his story at some point But I don't think we know Yeah But he did antagonize a lot of animals Bless his heart Medusa Sure Or wait

That's a misunderstood one She's the one that had the Who's the no Cleopatra Snake Oh the asp Bitter on the breast Or whatever Yeah

Like the snake She forced it to Medusa is the one Whose hair was made out of snakes Which is crazy that she never got bit That's something to think about You got any more questions I'll go with sharks as most misunderstood animal

For attacks Just because it seems like most of the time It's exploratory or whatever The word is you always say Yeah between them and snakes I think Are the winners You got more questions or is that it Jurf

That's it All right We're going to do a quick conservation corner. It's estimated that the worldwide population of sperm whales was over a million before the commercial whaling industry began. Yeah. In the early 18th century, by 1880, they think they had removed about 30% of those sperm whales. And then from that date until 1946, they do think that they partially recovered. but then after the Second World War, when whaling technology really progressed too,

they started using like exploding harpoons, a lot of different things. The population declined to about 30% of the pre-whaling population. They think there was over a million sperm whales that were killed between the 1800s and the 1900s. So hunting really led to the near extinction of large whales, including sperm whales, but then bands were instituted in 1917 by the International Whaling Commission. They got full protection in 1985 sperm whales, but Japan did continue to hunt them until 1988. You know, those Japanese, they love whaling. It's hard to take that away from them.

You like ocean food. Yeah. They do. Spirm whale numbers are now thought to be around 350,000, which is a lot better than most whales. They're still listed as vulnerable by the IUC. Their current challenges are entanglements and fishing nets, collisions with ships, and then they're losing a lot of their prey to overfishing, like the rest of the world's whales. So those are their main threats. They're still definitely threatened or vulnerable. All right. And then our claw rating is a new animal. So we're going to give them a claw rating from zero to ten claws.

This is tough. Yeah, this was a hard one for me too. Because I think it's an animal. that if we were out like scuba diving or snorkeling and I saw, it would be like my number one animal encounter of the year and probably for like a very long time. But I don't know if they're even my favorite whale. They're not my favorite whale, but I think they deserve to be. But they're not. They're cool whales.

Like that they dive. We're going to talk more about their biology. I'm going to put them at 104.9 claws. Whoa. Yeah. That's strong. I'll go eight. Yeah, I think I'm also going to go eight.

It's cool that they're the biggest toothed predator on the world, and they're really interesting. And I think it's so cool that they have the biggest brain of any animal ever. Cool name. But they just have never really risen to the top for me when it comes to whales. Actually, they might not even have the most sexual whale name. What whale has a more sexual name? humpback. Just for you out there that maybe thought, oh, I wish there's a little more biology in this episode.

There's going to be more in part two. And we're probably going to do a subscription episode that's really about their biology and more about the whaling industry history that we'll dive into a little bit deeper. So just so you guys know, there's so much information in this one that I couldn't really squeeze in a ton of biology. Well, you did a great job regardless, well. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks. Part two is going to be very interesting.

It's the part that I think about when I think about this story. Where the whale hit the shit. Yeah, pretty crazy. It wasn't even a white whale. Like it wasn't Moby Dick. They had to kind of flash it up a little bit. Just a normal sperm whale, kind of blackish when you see them from the surface. Yeah, classic Hollywood whitewashing.

All right. Well, thanks for listening, everyone. Mike. We love you. Oh. Yeah, what's up? We post the whole episode this time. Yeah.

So Mercury was in retrograde. I just have come to learn during that whole technical snafu. What is your sign? I think I'm a Virgo. Oh, no wonder. Oh, that makes sense. No wonder that happened. Yeah.

That's what I'm saying. It's not my fault. It's the stars. Astrologically, I was doomed to fail. All right. Well, don't do it again. And we love you guys. We love you.

See you later. Bye. Bye.