Whaleboat in the context of "Whaler"

A boat is a watercraft of a large range of types and sizes, but generally smaller than a ship, which is distinguished by its larger size or capacity, its shape, or its ability to carry boats.

Small boats are typically used on inland waterways such as rivers and lakes, or in protected coastal areas. However, some boats (such as whaleboats) were intended for offshore use. In modern naval terms, a boat is a vessel small enough to be carried aboard a ship.

Foveaux Strait (/foʊvoʊ/ FOH-voh; Māori: Te Ara-a-Kiwa, lit. 'the Path of Kiwa') is a strait that separates Stewart Island from the South Island of New Zealand. The width of the strait ranges from about 23 to 53 km (14 to 33 mi), and the depth varies between 18 and 46 m (59 and 151 ft). The earliest known chart of the strait was prepared by American sealer, Owen Folger Smith from a whaleboat of the sealing brig Union in 1804.

The passage was named Foveaux Strait in March 1809, after Joseph Foveaux, the Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales in Australia. Ferry services across Foveaux Strait began in 1877 and continue to operate regularly between Bluff Harbour and Oban. The strait has been described as "one of the roughest and most unpredictable stretches of water in the world". Severe weather and sea conditions in the strait have contributed to multiple shipwrecks and fatalities. One of these losses was the wreck of the SS Tararua in 1881—the worst maritime disaster for civilian vessels in New Zealand's history, with 131 fatalities. There are currently no formal definitions of the eastern and western boundaries of the strait.

Essex was an American whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. On November 20, 1820, while at sea in the southern Pacific Ocean under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., the ship was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale. About 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) from the coast of South America, the 20-man crew was forced to make for land in three whaleboats with what food and water they could salvage from the wreck.

After a month at sea, the crew landed on the uninhabited Henderson Island. Three men elected to stay on the island, from which they were rescued in April 1821, while the remaining seventeen set off again for the coast of South America. The men suffered severe dehydration, starvation and exposure on the open ocean, and the survivors eventually resorted to cannibalism. By the time they were rescued in February 1821, three months after the sinking of Essex, only five of the seventeen were alive.