In 1820, the whaler Essex was attacked by a sperm whale. The damage sank the Nantucket ship in the southern Pacific Ocean, and its crew was driven to cannibalism to survive. The event inspired Herman Melville’s 1851 Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, but before that two Massachusetts men visualized the disaster as part of their colossal 1848 “Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World.” This summer, for the first time in decades, all 1,275 feet of the panorama are going on view.
