[1][2] When the sailors start a fire, the Devil Whale awakes and attacks the ship, dragging it to the bottom of the sea.

The incident of the whale island on Sindbad's First Voyage, from Baghdad and Basra, may be compared with whales described by "Pliny (23 AD–79 AD) and Solinus, covering four jugera, and the pristis sea-monster of the same authorities, 200 cubits long; Al Kazwini tells a similar tale of a colossal tortoise.

[3] Early explorer Saint Brendan the Navigator (c. AD 484 – c. 577), in his travels, reportedly landed on the back of a gigantic whale on Easter Sunday, mistaking it for an island.

Soon as his monks started a fire to cook their meal, the "island" began to swim away and the sailors quickly scrambled back to their boats.

The story of this encounter with the giant whale as well as the crew's story of their reported experiences on a deserted island as a result of it gained international attention and inspired many depictions of the sperm whale in literature and later in film.