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Updated: May 17, 2025
Along the deck were arranged the huge "try-pots," with brightly blazing fires beneath them, the fuel being the crisp membrane from the already used blubber. On each side of the "try-works" were copper tanks or coolers to receive the oil as it flows over the sides of the pots with the rolling of the ship, or is ladled into them when sufficiently boiled.
Two harpooners attended the try-pots, replenishing them with minced blubber from the hopper at the port side, and baling out the sufficiently boiled oil into the great cooling tank on the starboard. One officer superintended the mincing, another exercised a general supervision over all.
Some of the men stripped to the waist, and, begrimed with smoke and oil, were working away with forks or ladles, either throwing in the blubber, chopped into small pieces, or skimming off the scraps, or baling out the oil; others of the men were in the blubber-room, heaving on deck the horse-pieces, of about thirty pounds weight each, to be minced fine before being thrown into the try-pots.
If they catch us we shall be in their try-pots before many hours have gone by, but if we can get on board the ship we can at all events have a fight for our lives." The men needing no further incentive to exertion, cramming their food into their mouths, threw out their oars and away we flew over the now calm surface of the ocean.
All the available firearms were loaded, heavy stones which formed the ship's ballast, were placed along the waterways fore and aft in readiness to smash the canoes which he anticipated would come alongside, the trying-out works fires were lighted, and the huge try-pots filled with water, which when boiling would add to their means of defence, by pouring it down in bucketsful upon the savages; the cable was prepared for slipping, sails loosened, and every other precaution which suggested itself to him made.
As the stuff was gained, it was poured into large tanks in the blubber-room, the quantity being too great to be held by the try-pots at once.
The carcases, the little blood-stained busy men, the try-pots like witches' cauldrons and that strange-looking ship which even to her eyes seemed not as other ships were, all these had a tinge of nightmare. Amongst the men she noted one, big almost as Raft. He seemed their leader. "Chinks," said Raft, "Chinee they've got their pigtails rolled up, well, they're better than nothing."
On the flanks it is cased with wood, and at top completely covered by a large, sloping, battened hatchway. Removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in number, and each of several barrels' capacity. When not in use, they are kept remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished with soapstone and sand, till they shine within like silver punch-bowls.
"Trying in" is the term applied to the melting of the fat and the stowing of it away in barrels in the form of oil; and an uncommonly dirty process it is. The large "blanket-pieces" were cut into smaller portions, and put into the try-pots, which were kept in constant operation.
We began the operation of trying-out, as boiling the blubber is called, by first putting some wood under the try-pots. As soon as the blubber was boiled, the scraps which rose to the surface were skimmed off with a large ladle, and after being thrown into a pot with holes in the bottom to drain off the oil remaining in them, were used as fuel for boiling the remainder of the blubber.
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