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 ...

The Path of the Pequod. Click to enlarge. Image provided courtesy of the author, Nick Palffy. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville is in the public domain. Page numbers shown are from the first American edition, published in 1851. All notes in Power Moby-Dick: The Online Annotation copyright 2008 by Margaret Guroff.

Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly down upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At the time the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as the broad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all fell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life fled ...

The Pequod is in the vicinity of the peninsula of Malacca (modern Malaysia) where the Malay pirates originate. Upon exiting the Sunda strait, a boatload of Malay pirates tries to accost it, but they are easily outrun by the ship, crowding all sail, running grandly before the wind.

Adverse winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. It’s the first foul wind ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale yaw so before? it must be, he’s lost his tiller.”

At the time the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as the broad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all fell together as blank bladders that are burst,...

At the time the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as the broad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all fell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life fled from the smitten hull. "Bad news; she …

At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of the Pequod had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread, water, fuel, and iron hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for some time there was a continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and ends of things, both large and small.

Wilda Morris' latest collection, Pequod Poems, is delightful for its deliberate story telling through poetry. Its publication commemorates the 200th anniversary of Herman Melville's birth, and consists of poems written in an outstanding variety of forms, some rarely used, and even some invented by the author.

Wind-Forced Variability of Upper Ocean Dynamics in the Central Equatorial Pacific during PEQUOD. James Luyten. 1984, Journal of Physical Oceanography.