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A Modern Trying Out Rendering Pilot Whale Blubber in 1983 by Wesley N. Tiffney, Jr. The business of obtaining oil from whale blubber for lighting or lubrication has a long history. Native Americans simply collected oil dripping from stranded whale carcasses lying on the beach. Then, set tlers in the New World began to heat or "try out" the raw whale blub ber to separate oil from the fat and meat containing it. They rendered dead drift whales or whales caught near shore in portable try works set up on the beach. As the practice of whaling became more elaborate, later-day whalers used large ocean-going ships to hunt their prey. The ships featured specially built try-works and rendering of the oil took place on shipboard. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen turies, growing use of electricity and petroleum products made whale oil obsolete for almost all domestic and industrial purposes. Finally, recent passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act made the use of whale products illegal in this country and put an end to the American whale fishery. Consequently, it has been some time since whale blubber was tryed out in the United States. On November 17,1982,65 pilot whales (Globicephala melaena - also called blackfish or pothead whales) stranded and died at Wellfleet on Cape Cod. Staff members of the Kendall Whaling Museum in Sharon, Massachusetts, wanted to dissect two of these animals and attempt to try out their blubber. The staff spent a great deal of time obtaining the necessary permits from the National Marine Fisheries Service, which strictly regulates any present use of whale products. When the museum obtained the permits, its staff brought two whales to Sharon and dissected them under the direction of Dr. Bruce Gilley, a professional anatomist from Westerly, Rhode Island. The larger whale proved to be a female, and possibly the smaller was her calf. The staff saved and froze the blubber and the "melon" (an oil-filled sac on the head) until they could organize the trying out process. Nearly a year later, on November 20,1983, they were ready. The Kendall Museum staff had built an "analog" tryworks on the museum grounds, patterned after a type used by Basque whalemen some 400 years ago. While the design was Basque, the construction materials were modern: three feet wide and four high, the furnace was
