The novel Moby Dick is the story of a captain's obsession to get revenge by killing the white whale that had bitten off his leg. The climax of the novel, the attack and sinking of the whale ship Pequod by the white whale Moby Dick, was based on a true incident involving the whale ship Essex, which sank after being attacked by a whale Using primary sources, this book illuminates the history of the whaling industry in its heyday and how Herman Melville used his life experience and research to create what some twentieth-century critics have called the greatest work of American fiction.