Drink, ye harpooners! Marine archaeologists have found the sunken 19th-century whaling ship that was once captained by the man whose adventures served as the inspiration for Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick . The ship, christened “Two Brothers,” went down in 1823, was helmed by Captain George Pollard, whose previous ship, “The Essex,” had been rammed by a sperm whale and sank in the South Pacific two years prior. This story famously served as the inspiration for Melville’s 1851 novel. “To find the physical remains of something that seems to have been lost to time is pretty amazing,” said Nathaniel Philbrick, an author and historian specializing in George Pollard and his ships. “It just makes you realize these stories are more than stories. They’re about real lives.” Amen to that, matey. [via BBC]