MS Pequod

“ In a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossed shuttle-cock to the blast, it is by no means uncommon to see the needles in the compasses, at intervals, go round and round. It was thus with the Pequod’s; at almost every shock the helmsman had not failed to notice the whirling velocity with which they revolved upon the cards; it is a sight that hardly any one can behold without some sort of unwonted emotion. ”

“ CHAPTER CXXXI.
the pequod meets the delight.
The intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by; the life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship, most miserably misnamed the Delight, was descried. As she drew nigh, all eyes were fixed upom her broad beams, called shears, which, in some whaling-ships, cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet; serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats. ”

“ Had you descended from the Pequod's try-works to the Pequod's forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single moment you would have almost thought you were standing in some illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay in their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.
In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot. ”

“ Ahab, the captain of the Pequod, a grim and grizzled old fellow, was half crazy with rage against the monster, who in a previous voyage had shorn off his leg at the knee. On each side of the Pequod’s deck an auger-hole was bored, where the skipper could steady his artificial leg of whale ivory. At the beginning of the voyage Ahab nailed to the mast a Spanish gold doubloon, promising it to the man who should raise “a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and crooked jaw, with three harpoon holes punctured in the starboard fluke.” ”

“ It turned out that the Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board, and that Mayhew, her captain, was fearful of infecting the Pequod’s company. For, though himself and boat’s crew remained untainted, and though his ship was half a rifle-shot off, and an incorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing between; yet conscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine of the land, he peremptorily refused to come into direct contact with the Pequod. ”

“ But the rest of the crew obeying this crazy captain was a miscellaneous collection of half-savages. Three chief harpooners were Tashtego, an American Indian, Daggoo, a gigantic coal-black negro, and Fedallah, a mysterious East Indian. The Pequod sailed from Nantucket, rounding Cape Horn to the Pacific, where Captain Ahab expected to meet his enemy somewhere in his favorite feeding-grounds along the Equator. They killed many whales, and had many wild adventures; but they were continually on the watch for Moby Dick, and sought tidings of the monster from every ship they met. ”

“ Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the ships of the American Whale Fleet have each a private signal; all which signals being collected in a book with the names of the respective vessels attached, every captain is provided with it. Thereby, the whale commanders are enabled to recognise each other upon the ocean, even at considerable distances, and with no small facility.
The Pequod's signal was at last responded to by the stranger's setting her own; which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam of Nantucket. ”

“ But Ahab is Captain; and his madness is of such a quality that the white whale and all that is there symbolised, needs must render its consummation, or its extinction. On the waste of the Pacific, ship after ship passes the Pequod, some well laden, others bearing awful tidings: yet all are sane. The Pequod alone, against contrary winds, sails on into that amazing calm, that extraordinary mildness, in which she is destroyed by Moby-Dick. “There is a wisdom that is woe, and there is a woe that is madness.” And in Moby-Dick, the woe and the wisdom are mingled in the history of a soul’s adventure. ”

“ An Indian embassy went to Boston to apologize; a treaty was made, and the Pequods acknowledged the king of England. But soon they began to violate the treaty. Outrages were committed, and war began in earnest.
The Pequod War.
4. In this state of affairs the Pequods attempted to induce the Narragansetts and the Mohegans to join in a war against the English. But Roger Williams, now in Rhode Island, used his endeavors to thwart the alliance. Embarking alone in a canoe, he crossed the bay to the house of Canonicus, king of the Narragansetts. There he found the ambassadors of the Pequods. ”

“ Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod's quarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction, the braced ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own white wake.
"Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw," murmured Starbuck to himself, as he coiled the new-hauled mainbrace upon the rail. "God keep us, but already my bones feel damp within me, and from the inside wet my flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in obeying him!" ”

“ But it seems they always give very long notice in these cases, and the ship did not sail for several days. But no wonder; there was a good deal to be done, and there is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the Pequod was fully equipped.
Every one knows what a multitude of things—beds, sauce-pans, knives and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what not, are indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling, which necessitates a three-years’ housekeeping upon the wide ocean, far from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers. ”

“ With this company Melville was intimately imprisoned on board the Acushnet for fifteen months. Of the everyday life of Melville in this community we know little enough. In Moby-Dick Melville has left voluminous accounts of the typical occupations of whaling but beyond this nothing certainly to be identified as derived from life on the Acushnet. The ship’s company on board the Pequod, in so far as is known, belong as purely to romance as characters of fiction can. ”

“ The Pequod sinks with all her souls, but their bodies rise again to man innumerable tramp steamers, and ocean-crossing liners. Corpses.
What we mean is that people may go on, keep on, and rush on, without souls. They have their ego and their will, that is enough to keep them going.
So that you see, the sinking of the Pequod was only a metaphysical tragedy after all. The world goes on just the same. The ship of the soul is sunk. But the machine-manipulating body works just the same: digests, chews gum, admires Botticelli and aches with amorous love. ”

“ But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew; and when, after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the Pequod at last shot by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra side, emerging at last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the harpooneers seemed more to grieve that the swift whales had been gaining upon the ship, than to rejoice that the ship had so victoriously gained upon the Malays. But still driving on in the wake of the whales, at length they seemed abating their speed; gradually the ship neared them ”

“ As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the mountains, accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous passage in their rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon the plain; even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward through the straits; gradually contracting the wings of their semicircle, and swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic centre.
Crowding all sail the Pequod pressed after them; the harpooneers handling their weapons, and loudly cheering from the heads of their yet suspended boats. ”

“ Let's get it started."
He walked away, raising his voice and calling, "Pequod! Pequod! All hands on deck!"
The others broke away from the group, shouting the names of their ships to rally their crews. I hurried over to the jeep and checked my equipment. There wasn't too much film left in the big audiovisual, so I replaced it with a fresh sound-and-vision reel, good for another couple of hours, and then lifted to the ceiling. Worrying about Tom wouldn't help Tom, and worrying about Bish wouldn't help Bish, and I had a job to do. ”

“ Human things are only momentary excitements or amusements to the American Ishmael. Ishmael, the hunted. But much more Ishmael the hunter. What's a Queequeg? What's a wife? The white whale must be hunted down. Queequeg must be just 'KNOWN', then dropped into oblivion.
And what in the name of fortune is the white whale ?
Elsewhere Ishmael says he loved Queequeg's eyes: 'large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold'. No doubt like Poe, he wanted to get the 'clue' to them. That was all.
The two men go over from New Bedford to Nantucket, and there sign on to the Quaker whaling ship, the Pequod. ”

“ How few are the attempts to solve the problem of decreased speed, and what an eager, restless campaign is being waged to go faster and faster, and the addition of every mile above the record is hailed as another illustration of the perfection (?) of the flying machine.
To be able to navigate a machine at ten, or fifteen miles an hour, would scarcely be interesting enough to merit a paragraph; but such an accomplishment would be of far more value than all of Pequod's feats, and be more far-reaching in its effects than a flight of two hundred miles per hour. ”

“ Moby Dick, the great white whale, tore off Ahab's leg at the knee, when Ahab was attacking him.
Quite right, too. Should have torn off both his legs, and a bit more besides.
But Ahab doesn't think so. Ahab is now a monomaniac. Moby Dick is his monomania. Moby Dick must DIE, or Ahab can't live any longer. Ahab is atheist by this.
All right.
This Pequod, ship of the American soul, has three mates.
1. Starbuck: Quaker, Nantucketer, a good responsible man of reason, forethought, intrepidity, what is called a dependable man. At the bottom, afraid. ”

“ Pechell visited the Cape Verd Islands, Calcutta, and St. Helena; the Medusa being that year employed in conveying the Marquis Cornwallis to Bengal, and bringing home the suite of the same lamented nobleman [3] . Soon after her return to England, he followed Sir John Gore into the Revenge 74, which ship was one of the squadron under Commodore Sir Samuel Hood, when la Gloire, l’Armide, la Minerve, and l’Indefatigable, French frigates of the largest class, were brought to action and captured by the Centaur, Monarch, and Mars [4] . ”

“ The Admiral Pekhard was sent to Plymouth, as that port was nearer than Brest. Besides, the Seattle’s commander had learned already by radio that the entire ship’s company of the British ship had safely reached that port.
Mr. Dowd and Rollife went with the Admiral Pekhard; but after due consideration, and listening to the pleadings of Ruth Fielding and Tom Cameron, the latter pair were allowed to remain aboard the American cruiser. ”

“ Five days later he had joined his ship and Peggy was once more alone, yet, even then, over yonder under the shadow of the dome of the chapel at the Naval Academy the future was being shaped for the young girl: a future so unlike one those who loved her best could possibly have foreseen or planned. ”

“ To supper and to bed. This evening, by a letter from Plymouth, I hear that two of our ships, the Leopard and another, in the Straights, are lost by running aground; and that three more had like to have been so, but got off, whereof Captain Allen one: and that a Dutch fleete are gone thither; which if they should meet with our lame ships, God knows what would become of them. This I reckon most sad newes; God make us sensible of it! This night, when I come home, I was much troubled to hear my poor canary bird, that I have kept these three or four years, is dead. ”

“ So I judged, from the circumstance of Peckham’s unfurling a silken banner that fanned heaven and earth with the words, ‘The Peckham Lifeboat.’ No boat being in attendance, though life, in the likeness of ‘a gallant, gallant crew,’ in nautical uniform, followed the flag, I was led to meditate on the fact that Peckham is described by geographers as an inland settlement, with no larger or nearer shore-line than the towing-path of the Surrey Canal, on which stormy station I had been given to understand no lifeboat exists. ”

“ In 1800, Lieutenant Pechell left the Active to join his uncle’s flag-ship, the Foudroyant 80, in which he was present at the capture of Rear-Admiral Linois, an event noticed at p. 130 of our first volume. His advancement to the rank of Commander took place about Mar. 1807, and on that occasion he was appointed to the Ferret sloop of war, on the Jamaica station. From thence he proceeded to Halifax, where he was promoted by Sir J. B. Warren into the Cleopatra frigate, mounting 26 long 12-pounders, 2 nines, and 10 twenty-four-pounder carronades, with a complement of 202 men. ”

“ Several captains come to the office yesterday and to-day, complaining that their men come and go when they will, and will not be commanded, though they are paid every night, or may be. Nay, this afternoon comes Harry Russell from Gravesend, telling us that the money carried down yesterday for the Chest at Chatham had like to have been seized upon yesterday, in the barge there, by seamen, who did beat our watermen: and what men should these be but the boat's crew of Sir Fretcheville Hollis, who used to brag so much of the goodness and order of his men, and his command over them. ”