In the years to come, Melville’s professional life as a novelist would go the way of Pollard’s whaling career. Without a readership for his books, the author of Moby-Dick was forced to take a job as a customs inspector on the wharves of New York City. Although he ceased writing novels, he continued to write poetry, in particular a long, dark poem called Clarel, in which there is a character based on Pollard.
