Perhaps with the impending English publication of the novel in mind, Melville has Ishmael devote a chapter to pouring out what seem, at first, to be complimentary thoughts about English whaling. Having ridiculed German (and Dutch) whalers in “The Pequod Meets the Virgin” and French whalers in “The Pequod Meets the Rose-bud,” Ishmael devotes a second chapter to the English whaler, Samuel Enderby. The first chapter is taken up with Ahab’s interrogation of the Enderby‘s captain on the subject of Moby Dick, and Ishmael does not dilute the intensity of the scene by including with historical information about either the
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