The Town-Ho’s Time Line

(For reference, with chapter 54 of Moby-Dick.)

• 2 years Before Narrating Present (BNP): The Town-Ho mutiny occurs.
• “Not very long” BNP: The Pequod speaks the Goney.
• NP: The Pequod gams with the Town-Ho and one of the latter ship’s sailors tells Tashtego what has transpired on board.
• 1 day After Narrating Present (ANP): Sleep-talking Tashtego spills what beans he hasn’t already in the night.
• Who knows how long ANP: Ishmael, now an experienced sailor, spins the Town-Ho’s yarn to his Spanish friends at the Golden Inn.
• Still longer ANP: Ishmael, having completed his inaugural whaling voyage on the Pequod, decides to tell the story that he denied his Spanish friends in the form of a remarkable book.

(Incidentally, the mention of “Dame Isabella’s Inquisition wan[ing] in Lima” suggests that NP is in about the early 1800s, since the Inquisition in Peru pretty much ended with the Peruvian War of Independence [1809–1821].)