93, to the number question.
You're right, I stand corrected. Let me put it another way: one interpretation is that although Ahab knew he could not win, he was determined to try. He still managed to hold steadfast despite overwhelming odds and because of the belief that perseverance is key, he still gave his life and death meaning.
As Sparknotes.com puts it:
"A fatalist to the last, Ahab doesn’t flee the whale, although anyone with common sense surely would have sailed the Pequod out of the whale’s range at top speed after the first day’s defeats. Ahab’s death should not be read as a suicide, though. To the obsessed captain, each encounter with the whale fulfills a part of the prophecies made concerning his ultimate end. By going forward with the fight, he completes a larger design and gives his life and death a greater significance than it would have had otherwise. Only figures of importance—heroes, gods, martyrs—have their deaths foretold. By committing himself to a struggle he cannot win, Ahab becomes the stuff of legend.
Ahab’s death suggests itself as a metaphor for the human condition. Man, of limited knowledge and meager powers, lives and dies struggling against forces that he can neither understand nor conquer. By continuing to fight the whale even when defeat is imminent, Ahab acts out, in dramatic form, the fate of all men. His request that Tashtego nail a new flag to the mast of the sinking ship is a sign not of defiance but of recognition that to be mortal is to persevere in the face of certain defeat, and that such perseverance is the highest and most heroic accomplishment of man."
So. while not to say that Bowers is in the same situation, Bowers will probably go down swinging if nothing else, worst-case scenario. Though his fate may be pre-determined, I doubt he would give up and not try to make thwe time ha has count.
But hey! Bowers has advanced medical science on his side, so that's an advantage over Ahab!
...Why are we comparing him to Ahab anyway? LOL!
