"Trying Out": boiling down the blubber on a whaler's deck, 1874

The try-works amidships, two great iron pots over a brick furnace, with the smoke streaming aft, the men feeding the fires with scraps of the blubber itself and bailing the oil into casks. Browne likened trying out at night to “Dante’s pictures of the infernal regions.” On 16 Aug 1850, a week from home, the Globe’s crew “began on the old try-works and hove them overboard.”