Editing Trywork

{{Short description|Furnace for rendering blubber into whale oil}}
{{Merge|Try pot|discuss=Talk:Trywork#Proposed merge of Try pot with Trywork|date=March 2025}}
[[Image:trypots.jpg|thumb|right|Try pots on display at the Southampton Historical Museum in [[South Hampton, New Hampshire]].]]
A '''trywork''' is a furnace, used to heat [[blubber]] from [[whale]]s for the recovery of [[whale oil|oil]], on a [[whaling ship]]. 

The trywork is located [[aft]] of the [[mast (sailing)|fore-mast]], and is typically constructed of brick and attached to the deck with iron braces. Two cast-iron [[trypot]]s are set atop the furnace. It is similar to the [[rendering (animal products)|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.

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.<ref> Cf. ''[[Moby-Dick]]'', [[s:Moby-Dick/Chapter 95|Chapter 95, "The Cassock]]", footnote 1.</ref> The ability to use tryworks at sea thus enabled the [[Yankee]] whaling industry to flourish.<ref>[http://www.whalingmuseum.org/library/amwhale/am_index.html "Overview of American Whaling"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100407160857/http://www.whalingmuseum.org/library/amwhale/am_index.html |date=2010-04-07 }}, ''[[New Bedford Whaling Museum]]'', [[New Bedford, Massachusetts]]</ref>

== References ==
<references/>
* [[Herman Melville|Melville, Herman]], [[Moby-Dick]], [[s:Moby-Dick/Chapter 96|Chapter 96: "The Try-Works"]].

== Further reading ==
* "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}}

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[[Category:Whaling implements]]