The young narrator, Ismael, decides to go to sea on the whaler Pequod, which was ultimately doomed. Here we are introduced to the harpooner Queequeg, the first-mate Starbuck, Pip the cabin boy and the cheerful Stubb, all united in fishing for whale. The storyline is continually interrupted with in depth accounts of the techniques for whale fishing, with facts and figures - almost a dissertation on whale cetology.
Herman Melville was an American novelist born in 1819 and died in 1891. He sailed widely as a boy and went to see on the whaler Pequod in 1841, bound for the South Seas. He then joined the US Navy and had the chance to write three years into his service. He married and had four children. His religious views followed Manichaeism - the early heresy of a struggle of spiritual good versus material evil. This, though, is an epic tale without reflecting such thoughts.