The first time he met his Margaret, was when he walked off his ship after the Bay of Pigs and right up to a young dark-haired girl. He proposed to her then and there. Late of the US Navy, Captain William Scully was a strong, uncompromising but yet loving father to Dana and her three siblings. Eventhough he perhaps disapproved of her tomboy attitude and her unconventional aspirations, his quiet pride in her was evident, and it was clear that his daughter looked up to him. A private joke between them, based on Herman Melville´s "Moby Dick", accented their teasing relationship. Dana called her seafaring father "Ahab", after the captain of the doomed Pequon, and in turn, her father called her "Starbuck", after Ahab´s trusted and upright lieutenant.
Dana´s fear that her father never quite approved of her line of work caused her no little anxiety, and by "distinguishing herself" at the FBI, it was clear that she set out to win his praise. She found her sceptisism severly challenged by visions of her father after his sudden death in "Beyond the Sea", and it also opened a deep wound in his daughter. It is apparent that she got more than her sense of ethics, her stubbornness and her red hair from Captain William Scully (Mulder also says that she inheritated her sealegs). Her father appeared in a vision when she lay dying in "One Breath", and played a pivotal part in strenghtning her will to live.