Director: Ron Howard
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| https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/in_the_heart_of_the_sea |
I had to remind myself of these two points while watching this film. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, when people discussed oil exploration, they often referred to whale hunting. Petroleum had not yet been discovered as an energy source, and the Industrial Revolution had not yet begun.
Whale oil was used in the Western world for street lighting, to illuminate homes, street lamps, and offices, for industrial lubrication, and for manufacturing soap as well as margarine. It was also valuable in the production of explosives. With the discovery of kerosene as a cheaper alternative, whale oil fell out of fashion.
Another thing we often take for granted is agricultural fertilisers. We assume they have always been synthetically produced. Wrong. In the 19th century, the best fertilisers in the world came from the 'Guano Islands', a land made of bats and birds' droppings. As the world recognised its importance in farming and the need to feed the growing population, guano was also known as White gold. The same title was also given to cotton later, as it also drove the US and British economies.
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| Essex https://essex.nha.org/the-whaleship-essex/ |
This film depicts the true story of the ill-fated whaling ship Essex, which sank in the Pacific Ocean in 1820, after being struck by a giant sperm whale. Its crew of twenty escaped in three whale boats, but only seven of them ultimately survived, enduring a gruelling ordeal of hardship, dehydration, hunger, and resorting to cannibalism. One of the surviving boatmen, the youngest at fourteen when he embarked on the voyage, lived to tell his story to Herman Melville, who later wrote 'Moby Dick' in 1851.
