Who Is The Angry Whale?

The Angry Whale is a gigantic whale that drags the Baron's warship across the sea by its anchor. It has no name in the original story and causes the commotion in one of his seafaring tales.

The warship crashes into the whale while it sleeps near the surface. The impact feels like striking a rock: the Baron's head is driven into his stomach, and a sailor is flung far away. Enraged after being wounded by the rudder, the whale seizes the anchor in its mouth and races off, towing the ship behind it. When a hole opens in the hull, the Baron plugs it by sitting on it and takes credit for saving the ship. On the way back, the crew come across the dead whale and, with great effort, cut off its head.

This is a different story from the well-known episode of a ship being swallowed whole. Near the end of the original book, there is a separate tale in which a ship is swallowed by a giant fish.