Which novel features the whaling ship Pequod's captain?

Moby-Dick, and Ahab is named after a king in the Book of Kings described as doing evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him - which is the sort of thing Melville does constantly and which is why the novel is exhausting and rewarding in roughly equal measure.

The story had a real source and it was recent news. The whaleship Essex was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820, and the survivors spent three months in open boats, resorting to cannibalism and eventually drawing lots to decide who would be shot. Melville met the son of the Essex's captain, and read the first mate's account. There was also a real white whale, Mocha Dick, reported off Chile and eventually killed.

The Pequod is named for a New England people largely destroyed in a war in 1637, and the crew is deliberately assembled from everywhere - a Polynesian harpooner, a Native American, an African, a Parsi - under an American captain pursuing his obsession until it kills all of them but one. Whether that is a novel about whaling is a question the book itself keeps asking.