Short answers, pulled from the story.
Herman Melville was born on the 1st of August 1819 to Allan Melvill and Maria Gansevoort. His father was a prosperous merchant who eventually left the family in dire financial straits before dying on the 28th of January 1832.
On the 16th of June 1842, the whaler Acushnet anchored at Nuku Hiva where Herman Melville and his shipmate Richard Tobias Greene jumped ship to live among the Taipi people. This act of desertion became the raw material for his first book Typee published in 1846.
Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick during the summer of 1850 while living at his farm Arrowhead in Pittsfield Massachusetts. He dedicated the novel to Nathaniel Hawthorne as a token of admiration after hosting him on the 4th of August 1850.
Herman Melville died on the 28th of September 1891 from cardiac dilation and was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx New York City. His final years were marked by isolation and the private publication of poetry volumes with print runs of only 25 copies each.
Herman Melville took a position as a customs inspector for New York City in 1866 and held the job for 19 years. He gained a reputation for honesty in a notoriously corrupt institution while suffering from nervous exhaustion and physical pain during these years.