Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

American Whaler Try-Works: Placement, Structure, and Uses

The try-works distinguish an American whaler, combining solid masonry with oak and hemp. Planted between the foremast and mainmast—the most spacious deck area—the masonry foundation measures roughly ten feet by eight square and five feet high. Secured by iron bracing rather than penetrating the deck, the structure supports two try-pots, each with several barrels’ capacity. When idle, the pots are polished with soapstone and sand until they shine like silver punch-bowls. Sailors sometimes nap inside them, and confidential conversations occur over their iron lips. Ishmael first grasped the cycloid’s properties while polishing a pot here.

Try-Works Furnace Design and Pequod Voyage First Ignition

The furnaces occupy the masonry front, their iron mouths directly beneath the pots, fitted with heavy iron doors. A shallow water reservoir beneath the entire surface prevents heat from reaching the deck, replenished via a rear tunnel as water evaporates. The furnaces have no external chimneys, opening directly from the rear wall. The Pequod’s try-works were first ignited around nine o’clock on this voyage, with Stubb overseeing. The carpenter had been feeding shavings into the furnace during the passage, and the first fire requires wood before transitioning to the staple fuel.

Blubber as Try-Works Fuel and Its Noxious Smoke

After the initial wood ignition, the try-works run on “scraps” or “fritters”—processed blubber that still retains unctuous properties. The whale effectively supplies his own fuel, burning by his own body. However, this fuel produces horrible smoke with an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor resembling funeral pyres. Sailors must inhale this smoke and endure it for extended periods, described as smelling like “the left wing of the day of judgment” and serving as “an argument for the pit.”