Don whistle -- Not at all. I appreciate your fact-checking!

On Omoo's page 155, Melville writes:

"...I went on deck to take my place at the windlass; for the anchor was weighing. Poky followed, and heaved with me at the same handspike."

Omoo was published in 1847 and, I understand (I'm not a Melville expert) it is based on Melville's whaling experiences on the Acushnet 1841-1842.

I have written that a comparable whaling vessel, the Charles W. Morgan, which launched in 1841 (and IIRC was built in the same shipyard as Acushnet?) appears (based on the voyage logs and purchasing records I've looked at) not to have carried a brake windlass until its third voyage which began in 1849. This accords with my sense that although brake windlasses were in use earlier (the stunning example being Marryat's 1837 account, mentioned above, when he arose to the shock of the new device), they were not very widespread until the mid-1840s.

I believe Melville "missed" the time of the brake windlass (though I'm very interested in evidence to the contrary), and I think this is one reason why we see little to be connected to familiar chanties in Melville's works (which otherwise, I would guess, would revel in the chance to incorporate those songs). That's because I believe that the established use of brake windlasses was the pre-condition to (not the existence but rather) the real flourishing of chanties on ships and why we don't have a robust record of the chanties until late 1840s (theme of my documentary Songs of the Windlass).