Billy Budd

Billy Budd, Sailor is a novella by the American writer Herman Melville, left unfinished when he died in 1891 and first published in 1924. It is generally ranked second only to Moby-Dick among his works.

Billy is taken from a merchant ship into the navy and serves aboard the warship Bellipotent, where his good looks, good temper and willingness to work make him popular with the crew and most of the officers. The master-at-arms, John Claggart, is the exception, and his dislike curdles into a plot to ruin him.

When Claggart accuses Billy of mutiny in front of the captain, the young man is struck dumb by the charge, and the captain is left with a case that the law of the sea does not allow him to treat lightly. Melville left the manuscript in disarray at his death, and the first editors differed over what his intentions for it had been. He had worked on the story in the last years of his life, revising it from time to time without ever bringing it to a finished state.