Moby-Dick: From New Bedford to the Pequod

Ishmael steps off in New Bedford on a Saturday night in December and learns that the little packet for Nantucket has already sailed. His cheap lodging is the Spouter Inn, kept by Peter Coffin, a gable-ended old house leaning over on a bleak corner. A smoke-blackened painting hangs in the entry, and the bar is "a rude attempt at a right whale's head", beside a table of dusty rarities from the world's remotest nooks. The inn is invented; the Whaling Museum holds the Melville Society's collection and a half-scale whaling ship, the Lagoda.

Location precision: The Spouter-Inn is invented; the pin marks the New Bedford Whaling Museum, a stand-in for its cabinet of whaling curiosities.

Visitor guidance: The New Bedford Whaling Museum is on Johnny Cake Hill; it has run an annual Moby-Dick Marathon Reading since 1997.

On Sunday Ishmael goes to the Whaleman's Chapel, where black-bordered marble tablets remember men lost at sea, among them John Talbot, lost overboard at eighteen near the Isle of Desolation. Father Mapple climbs a rope side ladder to his pulpit, drags it up after him, and preaches on Jonah. The model is the Seamen's Bethel, completed in 1832 and still on Johnny Cake Hill. The ship's-bow pulpit was Melville's invention, but a replica was added in 1961, and the chapel keeps the pew where Melville sat in 1840.

Visitor guidance: The Seamen's Bethel is at 15 Johnny Cake Hill, across the street from the Whaling Museum.

On Monday morning Ishmael and Queequeg borrow a wheelbarrow, load their things and head for the Moss, the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the wharf. She glides down the Acushnet river past hills of casks piled on the wharves. Today the Merrill's Wharf district keeps the last surviving stone waterfront structure from New Bedford's whaling heyday, and the schooner Ernestina, a National Historic Landmark, is berthed at Steamship Wharf.

Location precision: The novel doesn't name the wharf; the pin marks the Merrill's Wharf district, the surviving whaling-era waterfront.

Visitor guidance: The district is part of the Whaling National Historical Park and has interpretive signs.

After a fine run the Moss anchors at Nantucket late in the evening, and the pair go ashore for nothing but supper and a bed. Melville's island is "a mere hillock, and elbow of sand". Two huge black pots hung from a topmast mark the Try Pots inn, where Mrs. Hussey asks "Clam or Cod?" and serves chowder of small clams, ship biscuit and salt pork. The inn is invented. The port's luck was already turning: sand bars kept larger ships out of the harbor, and a great fire in 1846 destroyed much of the town's commercial center and wharves.

Location precision: The novel doesn't say where the Moss lands and the Try Pots is invented; the pin marks Steamboat Wharf in Nantucket town.

Three ships are fitting out for three-year voyages: the Devil-dam, the Tit-bit and the Pequod, named for an extinct tribe of Massachusetts Indians. Ishmael picks the Pequod. Her tiller is carved from a whale's jaw, and Captain Peleg sits in a tent of whale baleen pitched on the quarter-deck. Among her owners is Bildad, a Quaker; Melville notes that Nantucketers invest in whale ships the way others buy state stocks. The Whaling Museum, in an 1847 oil and candle factory, hangs a 46-foot sperm whale skeleton from its ceiling.

Location precision: The Pequod is invented; the pin marks the Nantucket Whaling Museum, a stand-in on Broad Street at the head of Steamboat Wharf.

Visitor guidance: The Whaling Museum shows harpoons, lances, blubber hooks and cutting spades from the trade.

The Pequod sails on Christmas Day. Before sunrise a stranger named Elijah stops Ishmael and Queequeg on the wharf. By noon the ship has been hauled out, Bildad sings psalms at the bow, and when the pilots leave Peleg promises "a hot supper smoking for ye" in three years. "It was a short, cold Christmas," and the ship "blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic." The novel names no landmark; the pin marks Brant Point Light at the harbor mouth, where a light has stood since 1746.

Location precision: The novel names no landmark on the way out; the pin marks Brant Point Light at the mouth of Nantucket Harbor.

Visitor guidance: The present wooden tower dates from 1901, the tenth light on the point.