Peaceful creatures not to be messed with

TWO recent news items put me in mind of a book I read some years ago called In the Heart of The Sea.

The first concerned the anger of whales, and the second, long-term survival in an open boat.

I never found the classic whale novel, Moby Dick, an easy read. However, the story on which it is based, the sinking of the whaleship Essex by an enraged sperm whale in the mid Pacific in November, 1820, is an epic of survival, horrifying and heartrending.