Captain Ahab Captain Ahab Captain Ahab is a fictional character and the main protagonist in Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" (1851). He is the monomaniacal captain of the whaling ship "Pequod". On a previous voyage, the white whale Moby Dick bit off Ahab's leg, and he now wears a prosthetic leg made out of whalebone. The whaling voyage of the "Pequod" ends up as a hunt for revenge on the whale, as Ahab forces the crew members to support his fanatical mission. When Moby Dick is finally sighted, Ahab's hatred robs him of all caution, and the whale drags Ahab to the bottom of
Pequod (Moby-Dick) his new friend, the Polynesian harpooner Queequeg (or more precisely, Queequeg's idol-god, Yojo), to make the selection for them both, Ishmael, a self-described "green hand at whaling," goes to the Straight Wharf and chooses the "Pequod". It is revealed that "Pequod" was named for the Algonquian-speaking Pequot tribe of Native Americans, decimated and scattered in the early 1600s by the Pequot War and by the epidemic that preceded it. The Mashantucket (Western Pequot tribe) and Eastern Pequot tribe still inhabit their reservation in Connecticut. "Pequod" has endured the years and the elements, but not without sustaining damage. The ship has