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
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