Plot Summary
Chapter 89 of Moby-Dick begins with Ishmael explaining that the allusion to waif-poles in a previous chapter requires an account of the laws governing the whale fishery. sets up the central problem: when several ships cruise together, a whale struck by one vessel may escape and be captured by another, creating disputes over ownership. Ishmael notes that the only formal whaling code ever enacted into law was that of Holland in 1695, but American fishermen have created their own unwritten legal system so concise it could be engraved on the barb of a harpoon.
The Two Laws
Ishmael presents the two foundational rules of whaling jurisprudence: "A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it" and "A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it." A whale is considered "fast" when connected to an occupied ship or boat by any controllable medium—whether a mast, an oar, a cable, a telegraph wire, or even a cobweb. A whale also qualifies as fast when it bears a waif or other recognized symbol of possession, provided the claiming party can demonstrate both the ability and the intention to take it alongside. Though these laws are masterfully brief, they require extensive commentary and interpretation, sometimes settled with "hard words and harder knocks."
The Legal Case
To illustrate the laws in action, Ishmael recounts an English court case from roughly fifty years prior. The plaintiffs had harpooned a whale in the Northern seas but were forced by peril to abandon their lines and boat. The defendants’ crew subsequently captured the whale and refused to return it, even keeping the plaintiffs’ harpoons, lines, and boat. The famous barrister Mr. Erskine, defending the appropriators, drew a witty analogy to a matrimonial case in which a gentleman who had abandoned his wife could not reclaim her once another man had "re-harpooned" her—she had become a Loose-Fish. Lord Ellenborough ruled that the boat belonged to the plaintiffs (since they abandoned it only to save their lives), but the whale, harpoons, and line belonged to the defendants, as the whale was a Loose-Fish at the time of final capture.
Universal Application
Ishmael then extends the Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish doctrine far beyond whaling, arguing that these two principles are "the fundamentals of all human jurisprudence." He asks: what are Russian serfs and Republican slaves but Fast-Fish? What is a widow’s last mite seized by a rapacious landlord? What is poor Ireland to John Bull, or Texas to Brother Jonathan? All are Fast-Fish—possessions held by force. Turning to Loose-Fish, Ishmael asks what America was in 1492 but a Loose-Fish claimed by Columbus, and what were Poland, Greece, and India but Loose-Fish to their conquerors? Finally, he declares that the Rights of Man, religious belief, and even the great globe itself are all Loose-Fish—and that the reader is simultaneously both a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish.