As I was reading through chapter 35, The Mast-Head, Melville begins to describe the sailors on the ship and how they were so dedicated to their life of sailing. I thought that this section was a great description of how the saliors must have been going through on thier ship!

“In one of those southern whaleman, on a long, three or four years voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the masthead with amount to several entire months. And it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cozy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a century box, a pulpit, a coach or any other of those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves,”

I can truly believe that the men on these vessels were extremely exhausted from being out in the ocean for so long. They most likely wanted to go back to their town which was dreary and plain similar to what they are currently experiencing on the ship. Traveling very far distances in a boat for months on end in many different ocean conditions must have been a lot on them. Melville even describes how sad the living quality was on the sailing boats as well. These boats must have been very dreary and not full of much color and felt more like a very plain house which they might have been used to. The fact that he describes the place where many men would spend a lot of their time as “destitute of anything approaching to a cozy inhabitiveness” says a lot of how the Pequod must have also been like. I can imagine that it was not very comfortable either and they might not have had their own personal space due to how many people were abord. These men might have grown depressed being on the ship for that long and being surrounded with something that they had to become comfortable in for so long.