Nantucket in the context of "Pequod (Moby-Dick)"

The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a colony in New England which became one of the thirteen original states of the United States. It was chartered on October 7, 1691, by William III and Mary II, the joint monarchs of the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and was based in the merging of several earlier British colonies in New England. The charter took effect on May 14, 1692, and included the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Plymouth Colony, the Province of Maine, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the direct successor. Maine has been a separate state since 1820, and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are now Canadian provinces, having been part of the colony only until 1697.

The name Massachusetts comes from the Massachusett Indians, an Algonquian tribe. It has been translated as "at the great hill", "at the place of large hills", or "at the range of hills", referencing the Blue Hills and Great Blue Hill, respectively.

Huntress Glacier is a glacier 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) long and 3.7 kilometres (2.3 mi) wide flowing into the head of False Bay, Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. It is situated east of Johnsons Glacier, southeast of Contell Glacier and Balkan Snowfield, south of upper Perunika Glacier, southwest of Huron Glacier and northwest of Macy Glacier, and is bounded by Friesland Ridge and the Tangra Mountains to the southeast, Nesebar Gap, Pliska Ridge, Burdick Ridge and Willan Nunatak to the north, and Charrúa Gap and Napier Peak to the northwest.

The glacier was named by the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee in 1958 after the American schooner Huntress (Captain Christopher Burdick) from Nantucket, which visited the South Shetland Islands in 1820–21 in company with the Huron of New Haven, Connecticut.

The Wampanoag, also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands currently based in southeastern Massachusetts and formerly parts of eastern Rhode Island. Their historical territory includes the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

Today, two Wampanoag tribes are federally recognized:

The Niantic (/naɪˈæntɪk/ ny-AN-tik; Nehântick or Nehantucket) are a tribe of Algonquian-speaking American Indians who lived in the area of Connecticut and Rhode Island during the early colonial period. The tribe's name Nehântick means "of long-necked waters"; area residents believe that this refers to the "long neck" or peninsula of land known as Black Point, located in the village of Niantic, Connecticut.

The Niantic people were divided into eastern and western groups due to intrusions by the more numerous and powerful Pequots. The Western Niantics were subject to the Pequots and lived just east of the mouth of the Connecticut River, while the Eastern Niantics became very close allies to the Narragansetts. It is likely that the name Nantucket is derived from the tribe's endonym, Nehantucket.

Essex was an American whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. On November 20, 1820, while at sea in the southern Pacific Ocean under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., the ship was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale. About 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) from the coast of South America, the 20-man crew was forced to make for land in three whaleboats with what food and water they could salvage from the wreck.

After a month at sea, the crew landed on the uninhabited Henderson Island. Three men elected to stay on the island, from which they were rescued in April 1821, while the remaining seventeen set off again for the coast of South America. The men suffered severe dehydration, starvation and exposure on the open ocean, and the survivors eventually resorted to cannibalism. By the time they were rescued in February 1821, three months after the sinking of Essex, only five of the seventeen were alive.