The song and album title is a reference to the experience of being towed along in a small boat by a harpooned whale. The person to whom the song is dedicated, Owen Coffin, was a young seaman on the Nantucket whaleship Essex, which was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820. In the aftermath of the wreck, Coffin was shot and eaten by his shipmates. The Essex’s story was recorded by its First Mate, Owen Chase, one of eight survivors, in his 1821 Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex.