America and the Pacific : The view from the beach

By the time Herman Melville introduced American readers to Queequeg, the Polynesian harpooner in Moby Dick (1851), Pacific Islanders were an established presence in many maritime centers of the continent. They made up to 20 percent of the entire United States whaling fleet, most of them present on the west coast but with substantial numbers living around Melville’s own east coast environs. Hawaiians alone constituted one tenth of the population of San Francisco. Equally significant, by the middle of the nineteenth century up to 10 percent of some Pacific Island communities had experienced voyaging to American shores. Islanders’ adventures to the far eastern rim of the Pacific world were extensions of the seagoing spirit that had birthed their various societies in the first place.