Heads or Tails — Moby-Dick

Ishmael explains an old English law about whales caught on the coast. The king gets the head and the queen gets the tail. There is nothing left for the fishermen who actually caught the animal. The law still exists today, so Ishmael tells a recent story to prove it.

Some sailors from Dover chased and beached a whale. They dreamed of earning about one hundred fifty pounds from the oil and bone. Then a well-dressed man walked up with a law book called Blackstone. He set the book on the whale's head and said the fish already belonged to the Lord Warden. The sailors asked who that was. The Duke of Wellington. They asked if the duke had helped catch it. The man kept answering: It is his. They asked about their blisters, their sick mothers, and whether the duke might take only half. Every time the answer was the same: It is his. The whale was sold and the duke kept the money. A clergyman wrote to complain. The duke replied that he had already taken the cash and the clergyman should mind his own business.

Ishmael jokes that lawyers gave silly reasons for the head-and-tail split, including a mistake about where whalebone grows. Whales and sturgeons count as royal fish. The chapter shows how power can grab a prize even after workers do all the hard labor.