{"id":"01KFNR8B885GQ5QENFBVECRAYZ","cid":"bafkreihuufznuskatfmpkzrylxt5pmawt5nwcp6vexm26tbpmjts4amrhq","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":17491,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:06.399Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":17428,"text":"taking the altitude of the final rib, “How now!” they shouted; “Dar’st\r\nthou measure this our god! That’s for us.” “Aye, priests—well, how long\r\ndo ye make him, then?” But hereupon a fierce contest rose among them,\r\nconcerning feet and inches; they cracked each other’s sconces with\r\ntheir yard-sticks—the great skull echoed—and seizing that lucky chance,\r\nI quickly concluded my own admeasurements.\r\n\r\nThese admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first, be it\r\nrecorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any fancied\r\nmeasurement I please. Because there are skeleton authorities you can\r\nrefer to, to test my accuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell\r\nme, in Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country, where\r\nthey have some fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales. Likewise,\r\nI have heard that in the museum of Manchester, in New Hampshire, they\r\nhave what the proprietors call “the only perfect specimen of a\r\nGreenland or River Whale in the United States.” Moreover, at a place in\r\nYorkshire, England, Burton Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford\r\nConstable has in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of\r\nmoderate size, by no means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend\r\nKing Tranquo’s.\r\n\r\nIn both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons\r\nbelonged, were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar\r\ngrounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir\r\nClifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir\r\nClifford’s whale has been articulated throughout; so that, like a great\r\nchest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony\r\ncavities—spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan—and swing all day upon\r\nhis lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors and\r\nshutters; and a footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of\r\nkeys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep\r\nat the whispering gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the\r\necho in the hollow of his cerebellum; and sixpence for the unrivalled\r\nview from his forehead.\r\n\r\nThe skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied\r\nverbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild\r\nwanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving\r\nsuch valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished\r\nthe other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was then\r\ncomposing—at least, what untattooed parts might remain—I did not\r\ntrouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all\r\nenter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 103. Measurement of The Whale’s Skeleton.\r\n\r\nIn the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain\r\nstatement, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton\r\nwe are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement may prove useful here.\r\n\r\nAccording to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly base\r\nupon Captain Scoresby’s estimate, of seventy tons for the largest sized\r\nGreenland whale of sixty feet in length; according to my careful\r\ncalculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between\r\neighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty\r\nfeet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least\r\nninety tons; so that, reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would\r\nconsiderably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one\r\nthousand one hundred inhabitants.\r\n\r\nThink you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to\r\nthis leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman’s imagination?\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84EFF59D065Y6QH9FE34","peer_label":"Leg and Arm","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84EFF59D065Y6QH9FE34","peer_label":"Leg and Arm","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"novel","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR0H0Q791Y1SMZWEQ09FGV","peer_label":"Moby Dick","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KFNR8BE5AQT8SQR1JSM7GFM2","peer_label":"Chunk 2","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"},{"peer":"01KFNR8B84X6N73XPH30CK9AT0","peer_label":"Chunk 0","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:06.770Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:17.687Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}