Plot Summary
Chapter 90 of Moby-Dick, titled "Heads or Tails," opens with a Latin epigraph from Bracton's Laws of England, establishing an old English statute: the King is entitled to the head of every whale captured on the English coast, while the Queen receives the tail. Ishmael notes that this law, a peculiar offshoot of the Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish doctrine explored in earlier chapters, remains in force in a modified form in England and merits a chapter of its own.
The Cinque Ports Anecdote
Ishmael illustrates the law with a recent real-life incident. A group of honest, sun-burnt mariners from the Cinque Ports chase, kill, and beach a valuable whale, anticipating roughly one hundred and fifty pounds from its oil and bone. Before they can profit, a gentleman carrying a copy of Blackstone appears and declares the whale a "Fast-Fish" belonging to the Lord Warden—the Duke of Wellington. In a darkly comic exchange, the mariners plead their case: they did all the work, they have families to support, one man wishes to help his bedridden mother. To every objection the lawyer replies with the same three words: "It is his." The whale is seized and sold, and the Duke pockets the money. When a local clergyman writes to the Duke requesting mercy, the Duke curtly replies that the matter is settled and the clergyman should mind his own business.
Legal Justification and Its Absurdity
Ishmael then examines the legal reasoning. The commentator Plowdon explains the King and Queen's right to whales on the grounds of the whale's "superior excellence." An older legal writer, William Prynne, claims the tail goes to the Queen so that her wardrobe may be supplied with whalebone—yet Ishmael points out that the baleen ("black limber bone") is found in the head, not the tail, exposing the absurdity of Prynne's rationale.
Thematic Significance
The chapter closes with a brief note that the whale and the sturgeon are the two "royal fish" under English law, and that the sturgeon must logically be divided the same way—the King getting the dense, elastic head, perhaps as a humorous comment on royal character. Through this digression, Melville extends his critique of property law and institutional power: those who do the dangerous work of capturing the whale receive nothing, while distant authorities profit through inherited legal privilege. The chapter sharpens the political edge of the Fast-Fish metaphor, suggesting that legal language can sanctify any act of appropriation.