Quakerism at Its Heart

One ship-sinking whale, 20 men, three open whaleboats, 95 days at sea. Eight survivors.

That’s the harsh equation behind an exhibit at Nantucket Island’s Whaling Museum dedicated to “In the Heart of the Sea,” the new film by Ron Howard that’s based on the best-selling book by Nathaniel Philbrick, an island resident. Both tell the story of the whale ship Essex, which sailed from Nantucket in 1819 only to be “stove by a whale” in the South Pacific and written into literary history in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.”