The owners are Quaker businessmen named Bildad and Peleg. They are both strict owners and tell Ishmael about Captain Ahab.
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Was the Pequod a real ship?
Pequod is a fictional 19th-century Nantucket whaling ship that appears in the 1851 novel Moby-Dick by American author Herman Melville. Ishmael encounters the ship after he arrives in Nantucket and learns of three ships that are about to leave on three-year cruises.
Why does Ishmael choose the Pequod?
He chooses the smallish Pequod (named after an extinct Massachusetts Indian tribe) because it is quaint, noble, even melancholy, all of which are virtues to Ishmael. Melville has fun with the negotiations regarding Ishmael’s pay.
What does the word Pequod mean?
Named after a Native American tribe in Massachusetts that did not long survive the arrival of white men and thus memorializing an extinction, the Pequod is a symbol of doom. It is painted a gloomy black and covered in whale teeth and bones, literally bristling with the mementos of violent death.
Who was the captain of the Pequod?
Captain Ahab, fictional character, a one-legged captain of the whaling vessel Pequod in the novel Moby Dick (1851), by Herman Melville. From the time that his leg is bitten off by the huge white whale called Moby Dick, Captain Ahab monomaniacally pursues his elusive nemesis.
Where does the Pequod sail from?
From Nantucket (an island and major whaling port off the coast of Massachusetts) the Pequod zigzags across the Atlantic, ducks under Africa, traverses the Indian Ocean, island-hops through Oceania, and finally makes its way home through North America’s Great Lakes.
Did the Pequod sink?
Moby Dick rams the Pequod and sinks it. Ahab is then caught in a harpoon line and hurled out of his harpoon boat to his death. All of the remaining whaleboats and men are caught in the vortex created by the sinking Pequod and pulled under to their deaths.
What does the crew of the Pequod symbolize?
Thanks to its ties to the extinction of the Pequot people, the name of the Pequod alone symbolizes doom and failure. By naming the ship for a tribe that didn’t survive, Melville is almost foreshadowing the deaths of the Pequod’s crew. The Pequod is necessary for the story, however.
What happened to the Pequod?
At the end of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the White Whale (Moby Dick) rams into the Pequod, sinking her and killing all aboard, except Ishmael. Ahab also perishes when he gets tangled up in a harpoon line and is dragged out to sea. It is, in short, a brutal ending that offers no solace for the reader.
How many people were on Pequod?
Although in fact 44 members of the crew are mentioned, in the final chapters Melville writes three times that there are 30 crewmembers. Since there were thirty states in the union at the time, it has been suggested that, in its diversity, the Pequod to be a metaphor for American ship of state.
