As you may have guessed, I'm reading Moby-Dick, and all the queer subtext between Ishmael and Queequeg has me wondering how common such practices would have been. Would the inter-racial nature of the relationship have been particularly uncommon/problematic? Whats the reliability on sources for this sort of thing?
I think this says more about Melville than it does any historical information about gay whalers (and I might add that that search term in google appears quite safe.).
There is a thread here about a similar issue. Although it doesnt mention whalers I think its safe to extrapolate it across all ships of that period. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1br68z/how_common_were_homosexual_intercourse_on/