Pequod (Moby-Dick) the ship's affairs to these two." Peleg served as first mate under Ahab on "Pequod" before obtaining his own command, and is responsible for all her whalebone embellishments. The depiction of life aboard the ship was based on Melville's own experiences in whaling (specifically aboard the "Acushnet" in the 1840s) and thus can be taken in many ways as representative of mid-19th-century Nantucket whaling. Pequod (Moby-Dick) Pequod is a fictional 19th-century Nantucket whaling ship that appears in the 1851 novel "Moby-Dick" by American author Herman Melville. "Pequod" and her crew, commanded by Captain Ahab, are central to the story, which,
Whaling in Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, concentrated at Antongil Bay. This was predated by native traditional whaling; the artist Theodor De Bry depicted Madagascans whaling as early as 1598. Whaling in Madagascar began on an industrial level as a northward expansion of the sperm whaling trade off the Cape of Good Hope around 1800. Christian Salvesen & Company of Leith, which held more whaling shares than any other single firm, operated briefly off Madagascar. After dispatching the factory ship "Horatio", yields were so low that Salvesen totaled deficits from 1911-1913. Adding insult to injury, while docked at Leith Harbour, the "Horatio" caught