Billy Budd, Sailor

By: Herman Melville

Narrated by: Paul Giamatti

Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative), also known as Billy Budd, Foretopman, is a novella by American writer Herman Melville, left unfinished at his death in 1891. Acclaimed by critics as a masterpiece when a hastily transcribed version was finally published in 1924, it quickly took its place as a classic second only to Moby-Dick among Melville's works.

Billy Budd is a "handsome sailor" who strikes and inadvertently kills his false accuser, Master-at-arms John Claggart. The ship's Captain, Edward Vere, recognizes Billy's lack of intent, but claims that the law of mutiny requires him to sentence Billy to be hanged.

Billy is the protagonist of the novella and a perfect example of the type of person the narrator calls the Handsome Sailor. His beautiful appearance reflects his upstanding character and, because of this, he earns the admiration of almost all of those he serves with aboard both the Rights-of-Man and the Bellipotent/Indomitable.

Billy is an innocent, child-like young man, whom the narrator often compares to Adam before the fall of man. His innocent nature ends up being a liability aboard the Bellipotent/Indomitable, though, as he is unable to understand or even notice the wickedness of Claggart, who irrationally hates Billy.

His death is represented as a tragic martyrdom by the narrator, and although the only official record of his death condemns him as a criminal, he is remembered more sympathetically in the sailors' ballad with which Melville's story ends, "Billy in the Darbies."

Public Domain (P)2025 Berkshire County Historical Society