Sentence:  [The] crew pushed out in a small boat and pierced the whale with a harpoon attached to a rope secured to the boat. Then it was hang on for your life. “A whale barreling along at the surface would take the men on the proverbial <WSD>Nantucket sleigh ride</WSD>, a bone-jarring, terrifying and, at times, no doubt exhilarating trip over the waves,” Dolin writes. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  An obsolete and dangerous method of whale hunting in which a small boat manned by rowers and a harpooner, or a series of small boats tied together, would be attached to a whale by means of a harpoon and would then be towed by the creature at high speed across the water's surface, until the whale eventually became exhausted.