The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket fleet of warships, of a sailor's corpse at sea on the North Atlantic "off Madaket" (which is a harbor on Nantucket Island) and its reburial with military honours, ending with the gun salute. It also makes the first reference to Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, specifically to the fictional character Captain Ahab. Throughout the poem, Lowell uses the fate of the fictional Pequod, the whaling ship in Moby Dick, as a metaphor for the fate of Warren Winslow and his fellow Navy crewmen of the "Turner" during World War II. Section II introduces the Quaker graveyard in Nantucket and Lowell's cousin, and
Whaling in the Sea of Okhotsk were fitted out for as long as a fortnight, sailing about for bowheads during the day and camping on the beach at night. American and Russian crews sometimes camped together. Whereas boats were often sent inshore to look for bowheads, right whaling offshore was always ship-based, with three or four boats usually being lowered for whales. Boats after right whales were gone from their ship for hours (not days or weeks, like boats searching for bowheads sometimes were), and seldom ventured far from their ship. While bowheads could be caught at night, boats that were still fast to right whales