"A Bold and Hardy Race of Men": The Lives and Literature of American Whalemen

2. The World of Whaling and its Residents

42 2 The World of Whaling and Its Residents figurations of whalemen as the embodiment of an ideal form of national manhood, though popular in american literature, did not go unchallenged . in chapter 14 of Moby-Dick, for example, ishmael describes nantucket whale hunters as isolated islanders, as rootless cosmopolitans, and as representative americans. and thus have these naked nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many alexanders; parcelling out among them the atlantic, Pacific, and indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let america add mexico to Texas, and pile cuba upon canada; let the english overswarm all india, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the nantucketer’s. for the sea is his; he owns it, as emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it.1 By calling nantucket whalemen “sea hermits”and their home an “ant-hill in the sea,” ishmael stresses how removed their lives are from those of their less isolated compatriots. as he explains earlier in the chapter, these men live miles from the massachusetts mainland, and they are “shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean.” Throughout the novel’s nantucket chapters, ishmael displays a particular interest in these “isolatoes,” their habits, and their customs. Though he could easily have shipped out of new Bedford, ishmael travels the additional miles to nantucket because “there was a fine, 43 The World of Whaling and Its Residents boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me.”2 Later, he adds that this indefinable quality has to do with nantucket’s status as north america’s first major whaling center and with the quaintness of its ships and the eccentricities of its people. at the same time,ishmael describes nantucket’s inhabitants as accomplished world travelers who have “overrun and conquered the watery world,” including the “atlantic, Pacific, and indian oceans.” To bolster his argument about the global scope of their whaling enterprises, he calls these seamen “emperors” and likens them to alexander, the military leader who conquered the known world during his reign as king of macedonia . Loosely quoting Psalm 107 and adopting an agrarian metaphor, ishmael concludes his description by positing that “the nantucketer, he alone resides and rests on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation.”3 With these words, ishmael intimates that these mariners are cosmopolitans , wanderers who are far more at home at sea than they are on land. and because his agricultural imagery connotes slavery and positions whalemen as plantation masters—in contrast to the imagery employed by authors who sought to appropriate whaling for national purposes—it underscores the way nantucketers have dominated and colonized the briny waters on which they live. ishmael metaphorically equates the islanders’ imperialistic aspirations with those of the u.s. government. characterizing whalemen as representative americans, he downplays their archetypal heroic status and advances a pointed criticism of westward expansion, the mexican War, and manifest destiny. although ishmael’s ant metaphor highlights the industriousness of nantucket’s whalers, it is actually derogatory, for it is used to emphasize the sandiness of the island’s soil, and it is coupled with the phrase “overrun and conquer.”4 The reference to “pirate powers ”is more clearly uncomplimentary.rather than endorsing producerist fantasies of manly american physical labor, ishmael’s depictions of new england whalemen focus on the many competing facets—local, cosmopolitan ,and national—of their identity. once the Pequod leaves nantucket, it never returns to the island, and because it does not stop at any foreign ports to recruit supplies, ishmael, unlike most antebellum american whalemen, does not get to experience 44 Chapter Two any of the world’s exotic places or cultures.To learn more from melville’s literary works about what it means to be a globe-trotting whale hunter, it is necessary to turn to Typee. first published in 1846, Typee recounts the adventures of two american mariners, Tommo and Toby, who desert a whaling vessel in the marquesas islands and take up temporary residence with the indigenous peoples of nukahiva. Typee is noteworthy because it does not figure whalemen as...