What is "pequod"

Pequod may refer to:

• Pequot, tribe of Native Americans
• Pequod (Moby-Dick), a fictional whaleship that appears in Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick

The Pequod is a fictional 19th-century Nantucket whaling ship that appears in the 1851 novel Moby-Dick by American author Herman Melville. The 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, Indian and South Pacific oceans. Most of the characters in the novel are part of the Pequods crew, including the narrator Ishmael.

Ishmael encounters the ship after he arrives in Nantucket and learns of three ships that are about to leave on three-year cruises. Tasked by his new friend, the Polynesian harpooner Queequeg (or more precisely, Queequeg's idol-god, Yojo), to make the selection for them both, Ishmael, a self-described "green hand at whaling", goes to the Straight Wharf and chooses the Pequod.

It is revealed that the Pequod was named for the Algonquian-speaking Pequot tribe of Native Americans. The Mashantucket (Western Pequot tribe) and Eastern Pequot tribe still inhabit their reservation in Connecticut.