Pequod Harpooneers
The three harpooneers of the Pequod are introduced as squires to the mates. Queequeg, already known to the reader, serves as squire to chief mate Starbuck. Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, Martha’s Vineyard, serves as Stubb’s squire. He is described as having long, lean, sable hair, high cheek bones, and black eyes that are Oriental in largeness but Antarctic in expression. Once a hunter of New England moose, he now hunts whales, his harpoon replacing his ancestors’ arrows. The third harpooneer is Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black man with a lion-like tread, who serves as squire to little Flask. Despite his imposing six-foot-five frame, Daggoo retains all his barbaric virtues, moving about the decks “erect as a giraffe” in deliberate contrast to Flask’s short, square appearance.
Crew Demographics
The chapter notes that while nearly all officers in the American whale fishery are American-born, not one in two common seamen are. This pattern is compared to the American army, military and merchant navies, and canal and railroad engineering forces, where “native Americans liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles.” Many whaling seamen come from the Azores, where Nantucket whalers stop to augment crews. Similarly, Greenland whalers recruit from the Shetland Islands. The chapter memorably describes the crew as “Isolatoes”—sailors who do not acknowledge the common continent of men, each living on a separate continent of his own. Together, they form a diverse delegation, described as an “Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth.”
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