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
Moby-Dick conception of the book". A second type of objection is based upon Melville's intellectual development. Bezanson is not convinced that before he met Hawthorne, "Melville was "not" ready for the kind of book "Moby-Dick" became", because in his letters from the time Melville denounces his last two "straight narratives, "Redburn" and "White-Jacket", as two books written just for the money, and he firmly stood by "Mardi" as the kind of book he believed in. His language is already "richly steeped in 17th-century mannerisms", characteristics of "Moby-Dick". A third type calls upon the literary nature of passages used as evidence. According