Moby Dick Coin Moby Dick Coin Known in the numismatic world as a "Moby Dick Coin", the Ecuadorian 8 Escudos doubloon, minted in Quito, Ecuador, between 1838 and 1843, is the one ounce of gold "sixteen dollar piece" Captain Ahab nails to the mast of the "Pequod", promising it to the first man who "raises" Moby-Dick. The coin is first mentioned in Herman Melville's novel "Moby-Dick", in Chapter 36 "The Quarter Deck" and later at length in Chapter 99 "The Doubloon". It is often confused as a Spanish doubloon, but this coin was not struck by the Spanish crown or endorsed by the
Billy Budd he published another version of the text which, despite numerous variations, may be considered essentially the same text. F. Barron Freeman published a second text in 1948, edited on different principles, as "Melville's Billy Budd" (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). He believed he stayed closer to what Melville wrote, but still relied on Weaver's text, with what are now considered mistaken assumptions and textual errors. Subsequent editions of "Billy Budd" up through the early 1960s are, strictly speaking, versions of one or the other of these two basic texts. After several years of study, in 1962, Harrison Hayford and Merton M.