In one interesting choice of many, Melville named two consecutive chapters the same way; chapters 26 and 27 are both called “Knights and Squires.” For the first one, he spends most of his time describing the knight in shining armor that happens to be the first mate of the Pequod: the great Starbuck. His qualities are all manly, dignified, serene, and heroic. Melville’s language is full of flourish and can get downright soppy. In chapter 27, he reveals who the other knights are, which are the second and third mate respectively, Stubb and Flask. They are not as regal as Starbuck, but they are still portrayed as dignified, rugged warriors. Then, to finish the medieval reference, Melville describes our squires, which are the three harpooneers; Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo, one for every mate. At the end of this, however, Melville abruptly shifts his tone. In page 132, he writes, “Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod’s company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all of the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles.” In other words, Melville initially uses medieval imagery as an analogy to build up the whaling ship hierarchies,  but we can see how in this passage he drops the curtain to reveal the exploitative nature of this and other systems our country was built on, which contrasts our romantic illusion of our nation’s greatness with the stark reality that it was built on the backs of the marginalized. 

In the first sentence of the passage, we can see how Daggoo, a Squire, is described as “imperial,” a term for royalty. He is obviously physically superior to Flask, as Melville calls Flask a “chess-man.” Having spent all the time up until now in these two chapters reinforcing the typical medieval hierarchy, Melville switches the language associated with Daggoo, who is of a lower rank, to recognize that there is nothing about Flask that should make him inherently superior to Daggoo; in fact, it should logically be the contrary. In the next sentence, however, he reveals what gives Flask authority over Daggoo, and that is that Flask is “American born.” In fact, while most whalers in America are immigrants, almost all officers are “native” Americans. This pattern repeats, Melville notes, in most other industries and systems that keep the country running, like the military or the builders of “the American Canals and Railroads.” Melville puts it eloquently in the last sentence: “in all these cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles.” In other words, the working class in America is composed of native born Americans (more specifically, white Americans) who hold positions of power, and the rest (the ones who do the heavy lifting) are foreigners and first generation immigrants. Xenophobia and racism were 

It is interesting that Melville chose the analogy of knights and squires for this dynamic between mate and harpooneer. Historically, knights were heroic warriors and they did the fighting, while squires had the role of assisting them with their equipment and didn’t fight a lot despite being trained for it. In the book, the mates are called the knights when it is actually the harpooneers (the ones being called squires) who go hand to hand with Leviathan and deliver the killing blow. We have not heard of the mates actually doing anything laborious up to this point in the story, while we know the harpooneers’ role clearly. Nevertheless, Ishmael reserves most of the heroic language in chapter 26 and 27 for the mates. The mates and the harpooneers seem to have reverse orders in the analogy of knights and squires, a sarcastic commentary on the part of Melville that the system gives recognition to the wrong party. In short, the harpooneers work like knights but get the same amount of recognition as squires. Society is built on the backs of people who are treated as second rate, but their contributions go largely ignored.