The Carpenter: "Then, if the hull go down, there’ll be thirty lively fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very often beneath the sun!"
Musing: When the Pequod lost the first man to take the watch on the grounds of the white whale, the life-buoy was also lost. Starbuck has the carpenter craft a new life-buoy out of the coffin he built for Queequeq when Queequeg was ill. This quote is another bit of foreshadowing.