“I have a fancy,” says Stedman, in his _Biographical and Critical Introduction_, “that it was the reading of Richard Henry Dana’s _Two Years Before the Mast_ which revived the spirit of adventure in Melville’s breast. That book was published in 1840, and was at once talked of everywhere. Melville must have read it at the time, mindful of his own experience as a sailor. At any rate, he once more signed a ship’s articles, and on January 1, 1841, sailed from New Bedford harbour in the whaler _Acushnet_, bound for the Pacific Ocean and the sperm fishery.”
In the second part of this statement, Stedman attempts to stick to the letter: but there is a flaw in his text. That Melville sailed in the _Acushnet_ is corroborated by a statement in the journal of Melville’s wife; in the record surviving in Melville’s handwriting, headed “what became of the ship’s company on the whaleship _Acushnet_, according to Hubbard, who came back in her (more than a four years’ voyage) and visited me in Pittsfield in 1850;” as well as by surviving letters written by Richard Tobias Greene, the Toby of _Typee_.
The roster of Melville’s ship is preserved in Alexander Starbuck’s bulky _History of the American Whale Fishery from its Earliest Inception to the Year 1876_ (published by the author, Waltham, Mass., 1878). Starbuck rates the _Acushnet_ as a ship of 359 tons, built in 1840. Her managing owners are reported as having been Bradford Fuller & Co. Under command of Captain Pease she sailed from Fairhaven, bound for the whaling grounds of the Pacific, on January 3, 1841, and returned to Fairhaven on May 13, 1845, laden with 850 barrels of sperm oil, 1350 barrels of whale oil, and 13500 pounds of whale-bone. On July 18, 1845, she started upon her second voyage, under command of Captain Rogers, to return June 7, 1848, stocked with 500 barrels of sperm oil, 800 barrels of whale oil, and 6000 pounds of whale-bone. On December 4, 1847, she had a boat stove by a whale, with the loss of the third mate and four of the crew. Her third voyage, begun August 31, 1848, under command of Captain Bradley, was her last. As by some malicious fatality, the _Acushnet_ was lost on St. Lawrence Island on August 31, 1851, within a month of the time when Melville brought _Moby-Dick_ to its tragic close.