Editing Moby-Dick (section)

===Autobiographical elements===
''Moby-Dick'' draws on Melville's experience on the whaler ''Acushnet'', but is not autobiographical. On December 30, 1840, Melville signed on as a green hand for the maiden voyage of the ''Acushnet'', planned to last for 52 months. Its owner, Melvin O. Bradford, like Bildad, was a [[Quaker]]: on several instances when he signed documents, he erased the word "swear" and replaced it with "affirm". However, the shareholders of the ''Acushnet'' were relatively wealthy, whereas the owners of the ''Pequod'' included poor widows and orphaned children.<ref>Heflin (2004), 16</ref>

The model for the Whaleman's Chapel of chapter 7 is the [[Seamen's Bethel]] on Johnny Cake Hill. Melville attended a service there shortly before he shipped out on the ''Acushnet'', and he heard a sermon by Reverend [[Enoch Mudge]], who is at least in part the inspiration for Father Mapple. Even the topic of [[Jonah and the Whale]] may be authentic, for Mudge contributed sermons on Jonah to ''Sailor's Magazine''.<ref>Heflin (2004), 41</ref>

The crew was not as heterogenous or exotic as the crew of the ''Pequod''. Five were foreigners, four of them Portuguese, and the others were American either at birth or naturalized. Three black men were in the crew, two seamen and the cook. Fleece, the black cook of the ''Pequod'', was probably modeled on this Philadelphia-born William Maiden.<ref>Heflin (2004), 26-7</ref> A [[first mate]], actually called Edward C. Starbuck was discharged at [[Tahiti]] under mysterious circumstances.<ref>Heflin (2004), 19</ref> The [[second mate]], John Hall, is identified as Stubb in an annotation in the book's copy of crew member Henry Hubbard, who also identified the model for Pip: John Backus, a little black man added to the crew during the voyage.<ref>Heflin (2004), 252 note 26</ref> Hubbard witnessed Pip's fall into the water.<ref>Tanselle (1988), 1012</ref>

Ahab seems to have had no model, though his death may have been based on an actual event. Melville was aboard ''The Star'' in May 1843 with two sailors from the ''Nantucket'' who could have told him that they had seen their second mate "taken out of a whaleboat by a foul line and drowned".<ref>Heflin (2004), 189</ref>