In 1876, the ship 'Northam' sailed from Australia to the United Kingdom with a cargo of refrigerated meat, marking the first attempt to ship chilled meat across the globe. The refrigeration machinery, however, broke down during the voyage, causing the cargo to spoil and the attempt to fail. Despite this failure, the voyage was a pioneering effort that demonstrated the potential of refrigerated shipping to revolutionize the global meat trade, and it spurred further innovation in the technology of marine refrigeration.

The story of the 'Northam' and the larger narrative of refrigerated shipping is a tale of human ingenuity and the desire to overcome the tyranny of distance, a theme that resonates in the poetry of exploration and technology. The ability to transport fresh meat across oceans changed diets and economies, and it became a symbol of the shrinking world in the late 19th century. Poets of the period, while not often writing directly about refrigerated meat, were aware of the profound changes being wrought by technology, and this event was a part of the broader cultural landscape that they inhabited.