A great underlying theme of Moby-Dick

Nobody forgets how strange "Moby-Dick" is right from the first chapters, but I think many forget how funny Melville is, his descriptions of the meeting with Queequeeg, the horrendous boarding houses where the sailors stay when ashore, the description of arid Nantucket where islanders to about with sticks of wood as if they're relics of the true cross. What are we to make of the homoerotic themes at the outset of Moby-Dick? Critics blithely ignored this aspect of the novel for years; Fiedler opened this theme up with Love and Death in the American novel, most famously his unearthng the homoeroticism in Huckleberry Finn, and that was very controversial - but in Moby-Dick less so, more undeniable, Ishamael and Queequeeg sharing a bed, Ishmael waking in the morning with Queequeeg embracing him, and the strange bonding between the two men - Ishmael notes that people stare at them as they walk the docks - and goes out of his way to say that Queequeeg is not unusual in this setting. Do they see them as a gay couple? This is a huge underlying theme of the book, and for that matter of whaling expeditiongs - the man aboard the ships for years, yet in the scenes Melville depicts of the boats coming ashore the men are not looking for women, but they stay together as crews, drinking and watching out for one another. One other bit of note: Ishmael's fascination with the grimy picture of the spouting whale in the boarding house, the picture is really the whole novel in its essence.