set into the railing that now resemble an open jaw. Like a fingerbone necklace on a cannibal, these adornments are clear evidence of Pequods success as a hunter and killer of whales. The principal owners of the vessel are two well-to-do Quaker retired whaling captains, therefore "the other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners, left nearly the whole management of the ship's affairs to these two." Peleg served as first mate under Ahab on Pequod before obtaining his own command, and is responsible for all her whalebone embellishments. Symbolic significance Scholars have seen the Pequod and its crew as symbolic but have disagreed on the specifics. The ship's racial diversity of the crew is taken to reflect the ideal of the American racial community. Its thirty member crew equals the number of American states at the time, and, in the words of Andrew Delbanco, the Pequod "becomes a replica of the American ship of state." Some agree in seeing the ship as an "assemblage," that is a group that stands for a larger group, while others have challenged the "well-known" interpretation. Cultural references "PEQUOD" is an acronym for "Pacific Equatorial Ocean Dynamics" project Citations Notes Sources Heflin, Wilson. (2004). 'Herman Melville's Whaling Years Edited by Mary K. Bercaw Edwards and Thomas Farel Heffernan. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. External links Fictional elements introduced in 1851 Fictional ships Moby-Dick Whale collisions with ships