ABSTRACT
On a day in 1819, the whaling boat Essex was struck by a whale, thousands of miles off the coast of South America. The 20 sailors on board clambered into life boats as their ship sank beneath the waves. They were as far from land as they could possibly be, with meagre supplies and only the most basic navigational equipment. The story was to inspire aspects of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and is also used by the author Karen Thompson Walker (2013) to illustrate the way in which the generation of fear in the imagination provides the main impetus for the decisions we make. She describes how the nearest land was to be found at the Marquesa Islands, but the sailors had heard fearful tales about the islands being inhabited by cannibals. Another option was Hawaii, but the captain was concerned about storms which would sink them. The last option was the longest. It involved sailing 1,500 miles south in the hope of catching the winds which would take them to safety on the coast of South America.
