Which character owns the coffin that later saves Ishmael?

Queequeg owns the coffin that later saves Ishmael in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.

After Queequeg becomes gravely ill aboard the Pequod, the ship’s carpenter makes him a coffin in anticipation of his death. Queequeg unexpectedly recovers and keeps the coffin as a sea chest. Later, when the Pequod sinks during the final chase of Moby Dick, the coffin rises from the whirlpool and becomes a makeshift life buoy. Ishmael clings to it until the Rachel rescues him.

A common mix-up is to credit Ishmael with the coffin because it is his means of survival. However, Ishmael never owns it: the coffin was specifically made for Queequeg, and its survival after the shipwreck links Queequeg to the novel’s only surviving narrator. The episode also turns an object associated with death into the instrument of Ishmael’s survival.