Moby-Dick Ch. 77: The Great Heidelburgh Tun

Herman Melville

The Great Heidelburgh Tun

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Summary

Now it is time to bail out the Case, the upper oil tank in the sperm whale's head. But first Ishmael explains what is inside the head.

Imagine the sperm whale's head as a solid block. You can split it sideways into two big parts. The lower part is bone. It forms the skull and jaws. The upper part is a soft oily mass with no bones. Its front end is the forehead you see from outside.

Split the upper part across the middle and you get two sections. A thick wall of tough tissue already divides them naturally. The lower section is called the junk. It is one huge honeycomb of oil. Tough white fibers cross and recross to make thousands of tiny cells filled with oil.

The upper section is called the Case. Ishmael compares it to the famous Great Heidelberg Tun, a huge wine cask. The whale's folded forehead looks carved with strange designs, like the carvings on that tun. Inside the Case is the whale's most precious oil: spermaceti. It is pure, clear, and sweet-smelling. You cannot find it anywhere else in the whale's body.

While the whale is alive the spermaceti stays liquid. After death, when air touches it, it starts to harden into beautiful crystal shapes, like thin ice forming on water. A large whale's Case can hold about five hundred gallons. But a lot is lost through spills, leaks, and drips when the crew tries to save it.

A silky pearl-colored membrane lines the inside of the Case. Ishmael says it is finer than any coating inside the real Heidelberg Tun. The Case runs along the whole top of the head. Since the head is about one third of an eighty-foot whale, the tun is more than twenty-six feet deep when hoisted against the ship.

When the whale is beheaded, the cutter must be very careful. A wrong cut can pierce the spermaceti tank and waste the precious oil. The cut end of the head is lifted out of the water and held by heavy ropes.

Ishmael ends by asking you to watch the amazing and dangerous operation that comes next: tapping the sperm whale's great Heidelberg Tun.

In this chapter: Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Mapping Premium Reservoirs

Extraction fails when nobody can point to the exclusive tank. Ishmael divides junk honeycomb from the Heidelburgh Case, names spermaceti found nowhere else, and measures hoisted depth before tapping.

Before your team opens a crown-jewel datastore, publish the quoin map and assign heedful cuts.

Coming Up in Chapter 78

Next: Cistern and Buckets. Tashtego runs the mainyard-arm like a cat, drops by whip tackle onto the hoisted tun, and baling fills tubs with bubbling sperm until a queer accident drops him into the Case.

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Original text

634 wordscomplete

Chapter 77

The Great Heidelburgh Tun

The Great Heidelburgh Tun. Now comes the Baling of the Case. But to comprehend it aright, you must know something of the curious internal structure of the thing operated upon. Regarding the Sperm Whale’s head as a solid oblong, you may, on an inclined plane, sideways divide it into two quoins,* whereof the lower is the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the upper an unctuous mass wholly free from bones; its broad forward end forming the expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale. At the middle of the forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, and then you…

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Critical Thinking Exercise

10 minutes

Draw Your Case and Junk

Where is premium versus matrix in your main asset? Who cuts near the magazine?

Consider:

•Quoins?
•Yield?
•Spill risk?

Journaling Prompt

Write about value lost because nobody mapped the tank first.

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The Great Heidelburgh Tun

Summary