Trywork

A trywork is a furnace, used to heat blubber from whales for the recovery of oil, on a whaling ship.

The trywork is located aft of the fore-mast, and is typically constructed of brick and attached to the deck with iron braces. Two cast-iron trypots are set atop the furnace. It is similar to the rendering process for producing lard by heating or frying fatty pork. A reservoir of water under the bricks keeps the furnace from scorching the wood of the deck.

Early on in the history of whaling, vessels had no means to process blubber at sea and had to bring it into port for processing.^[1] Later, though, whaling vessels frequently included a trywork, a brick furnace and set of try pots built into the deck.

In the 18th and 19th century New England whaling industry, tryworks on whaling ships allowed the vessels to stay at sea longer as it allowed them to boil out the oil during the voyage and not have to carry unprocessed blubber home. Slices of blubber were cut as thinly as possible for the process, and on New England whaling ships, these slices were known as "bible leaves" by the sailors.^[2] The ability to use tryworks at sea thus enabled the Yankee whaling industry to flourish.^[3]

A try pot is a large pot used to remove and render the oil from blubber obtained from cetaceans (whales and dolphins) and pinnipeds (seals), and also to extract oil from penguins. Once a suitable animal such as a whale had been caught and killed, the blubber was stripped from the carcass in a process known as flensing, cut into pieces, and melted in the try pots to extract the oil.

• Melville, Herman, Moby-Dick, Chapter 96: "The Try-Works".
• "Trying Out the Oil", chapter in the book by Peter Cook, You Wouldn't Want to Sail on a 19th-Century Whaling Ship!, New York : Franklin Watts, 2004. ISBN 0-531-16399-7
• "Trying Out the Oil"^[usurped], chapter in the book by Peter Cook, You Wouldn't Want to Sail on a 19th-Century Whaling Ship!, New York : Franklin Watts, 2004. ISBN 0-531-16399-7