The Moby-Dick Bible
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Literary Motifs › Whaling Practices

Whaling Practices

1 passage in the novel carry this mark, in the order they appear.

Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.

In disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought alongside the ship, the same preliminary proceedings commonly take place as in the case of a sperm whale; only, in the latter instance, the head is cut off whole, but in the former the lips and tongue are separately removed and hoisted on deck, with all the well known black bone attached to what is called the crown-piece.

Chapter 73, Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk over Him · verse 23

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