If you're interested in more depth, a great book to read is Away Off Shore, written by Nathaniel Philbrick. It's a very well written and readable history of Nantucket.
I think you will find that one of the nice things about HN is that most people have read or skimmed the linked article before commenting. The book is explicitly mentioned in the second paragraph of the article and is alluded to in the epigraph of the article highlighting the upcoming release of the movie with the same title.
"With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales."
8 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 30.8 ms ] threadhttp://americanliterature.com/author/herman-melville/book/mo...
"With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales."