Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work as well as his daily life on Coenties Slip.

Indiana's journal page for July 20, 1961, includes a sketch of Melville, with a comment stating that if the painting were larger and had a third ring, that he would have incorporated the line "Oh none but cowards send down their brain trucks in tempest time” from chapter 120 of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. He declares the work "a cool painting as it is."