The manuscript of the story “Billy Budd, the Fore-Mars Sailor” was discovered in 1919 by the American researcher of Melville’s work R.M. Weaver in the writer’s personal papers and published in 1924 in the additional XIII volume of the first collected works of Melville, published in England. Melville indicated the completion date of the story (April 19, 1891), but did not have time to prepare the manuscript for printing (he died on September 28 of the same year). American researchers offer various versions of difficult-to-read passages in “Billy Budd,” and the textual work on the story cannot, apparently, be considered finally completed. The manuscript of “Billy Budd” contains a dedication: “To Jack Chace, an Englishman, wherever else he is now generous heart, here on our soil, or at the last stop, in paradise, to the first main-mars petty officer on the American frigate "United States" in 1843. Chace, Melville's friend from his joint service on the USS United States, appears under his own name in Melville's novel "The White Pea Jacket" (Russian translation: Leningrad: Nauka, 1973. Series "Literary Monuments").