In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick, tells the true story of the whaling ship that was purposefully struck by a sperm whale and sunk. This was the source of the novel Moby Dick.
I certainly feel sympathy for the struggles of the sailors a drift at sea, but when you read of their actions, I can only muster moral revulsion. Whaling was an environmental catastrophe, of course for the whales, but just about for any other living thing their crew came across. The men of the Essex toted giant tortoises off the Galapagos Island for food, and then failed to feed or give them water (under the mistaken belief that can go for months without sustenance).
One sailor, as a prank, burned down one the islands, leaving a charred wasteland. The surviving crew resorting to cannibalism – and it is sadly no surprise that the first sailors who supposedly died and were first eaten where the African-Americans among the crew.
This is America in a snapshot: environment destruction, racism, short sighed profit motives, even an abominable version of Quakerism… the whale was correct in identifying and destroying its enemy. It killed in self-defense.
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