Despite strange warnings, Ishmael, a young schoolteacher from Manhattan, signs up for a voyage aboard the Pequod, a whaling ship departing from New Bedford, Massachusetts. While on shore, he strikes up a friendship with Queequeg, a tattooed South Seas cannibal. The unlikely friends are hired for the journey-only to discover their commander will be Captain Ahab, a brooding, one-legged, tyrannical old man fixated on avenging Moby Dick, the great white whale who crippled him.