Pequod (Moby-Dick) 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, after the initial chapters, takes place almost entirely aboard the ship during a three-year whaling expedition in the Atlantic, Indian and South Pacific oceans. Most of the characters in the novel are part of "Pequod"s crew, including the narrator Ishmael. Ishmael encounters the ship after he arrives in Nantucket and learns of three ships that are about to leave on three-year cruises. Tasked by
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