r and then shipped to Honolulu, Hawaii, where in 1843 he enlisted as a seaman on the U.S. Navy frigate United States. After his discharge in 1844 he began to create novels out of his experiences and to take part in the literary life of Boston and New York City. Melville's first five novels all achieved quick popularity. Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846), Omoo, a Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847), and Mardi (1849) were romances of the South Sea islands. Redburn, His First Voyage (1849) was based on his own first trip to sea, and White-Jacket, or the World in a Man-of-War (1850) fictionalized his experiences in the navy. In 1850 Melville moved to a farm near Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he became an intimate friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom he dedicated his masterpiece Moby-Dick; or The White Whale (1851). The central theme of the novel is the conflict between Captain Ahab, master of the whaler Pequod, and Moby-Dick, a great white whale that once tore off one of Ahab's legs at the knee.
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