The story of Moby Dick was actually inspired by a real event, a whaling ship got sunk by a sperm whale and only a small part of the crew survived, they had to escape in small boats and drift at sea for months with no supplies, even resorting to cannibalism of dead crew members, and yeah behavior like that from whales is extremely rare, but what’s really crazy is how whaling actually worked, they really did it like you see in some games, part of the crew would get into a small rowing boat and throw a harpoon tied to a rope into the whale when it came up to the surface, after that the injured and scared whale would start dragging the boat, there’s even a name for it, “Nantucket sleighride”, they could be stuck like that for hours being pulled across the ocean until the whale got exhausted, then they’d get closer and stab it with lances until it died and finally tow it back to the main ship, I honestly had no idea it worked like that, it’s terrifying when you think about it, imagine if the whale just dives deep or flips your boat, which actually happened a lot, you could end up miles and miles away from your ship getting dragged into the open ocean right next to a massive creature like that, extremely scary.

this is extremely random info but i dunno i just kinda developed a hyperfixation on whale hunting these past few days and decided to share this curiosity, there are also a lot of creepy and beautiful paintings about whale hunting, i recommend looking them up