What takes longest is the meat; in the author’s kitchen a piece of rolled salt brisket about six inches in diameter gets four to five hours of very gentle simmering, longer if it has been loitering in its brine for over six months. A large ham takes about the same time. Which means that if the meat has to be cooked by 10.30am to allow an hour’s cooling before taking it out at 11.30am, it has to start cooking at about 6am. We know that on most ships (ignoring St Vincent’s odd order quoted above) the cook lit the stove soon after 4am; he probably did so with some water in the boilers, topping them up after all the meat was in and it would then take half an hour or so to come back to the boil.20 After this point, the cook would then need to watch his fire carefully, feeding it just enough to keep the water simmering rather than boiling hard.
And finally, what did they eat for supper? Other than the second part of the day’s alcohol ration, which was issued late in the afternoon, there seems to have been no official preparation of food for this meal. They must have saved some of their biscuit, and could have eaten this with some meat saved from dinner, a little cheese, or whatever they had in their private stock. Perhaps, in cold weather, this is when they had the soup which several commanders-in-chief mention; otherwise, since the galley fire would have long since been extinguished, it had to be something cold.
BAD WEATHER AND BATTLES
There were some occasions when it would have been impossible to light the stove and cook. One of these was the days in port when they were loading powder and the rule was ‘No fires, no lights’. Any given ship would have very little, if any, control over exactly when it loaded, so on such days it would have been cold dinner and catch-up on another day. Such catching up was within the remit of the purser and since everyone would see the sense of it there would be no grumbling.
In bad weather it would have been impossible to cook. Not only would the contents of the boiler slop about with some inevitable spillage, the fire itself would shift and be difficult to control. Even the closed fire under the boilers would be a problem as the cook would not dare open the door to feed it. There are several reports of ships going round the Horn being unable to light the fires for weeks on end. It would not even have to be rough weather to create such problems; a ship moving, say, across the Trades could develop quite a heel even on a calm sea. This may not carry the fire risk of a ship lurching about on rough water, but it would restrict the amount of water they would want to put in the boilers.
The battle situation creates a problem of timing. The general thinking was that ‘Englishmen would fight all the better for having a comfortable meal’ beforehand; such a meal would not only be comforting to the belly but provide essential fuel for the coming exertions. So convinced were senior officers of the necessity for this that Howe incorporated a signal in his new system that read ‘There will be time for the men to dine’, hoisting this signal on the first of the four days that culminated in the ‘Glorious First of June’. But they needed to ensure that the fires were out before powder started coming up from below and the enemy started firing. This would not, in most situations, have created much of a problem; unlike land fights, where the enemy could often hide and pop out unexpectedly, sea battles, whether major engagements or single-ship actions, were usually preceded by a long chase or prolonged manoeuvring for position. As long as they could see three or fours hours clear, there was time to light the fires and cook some meat; if, when it was ready, there was obviously no time to eat it at the tables, it could at least be issued and eaten from the hand. If there was no time for that, it was a case of biscuit, cheese and a mug of wine or grog taken at each man’s action station.21
PERSONAL EXTRAS
It has often been said that the British seaman was a very conservative eater. Perhaps he was, but there can be little doubt that any mess of men who liked their food would take whatever opportunity presented itself to buy some little extras to perk up their rations. One man might be delegated to do the buying, with the others stumping up their share in cash or kind. The surgeon of Daedalus remarked that while on the Moluccas station, the men exchanged their unwanted rice for yams, pumpkins and sweet potatoes.22 And of course, anyone who came across something good while on his own would naturally share it with his mess-mates; this has always been the norm when groups of men eat together regularly.
Whenever they touched land, even if away from a town, the locals would want to make the most of the opportunity to sell their wares. Wybourn remarked of watering at Sardinia, when ‘hundreds of the Natives [sic] flocked down bringing quantities of provisions, Animals, Vegetables, fruit, etc.,’ and when Keith’s fleet was assisting the army in Egypt in 1800, the army quartermasters regulated the market by keeping the Arab sellers on one side of a stretched rope while the army and navy buyers stood on the other. Here, as well as sheep, poultry and pigeons, the Arabs sold spinach, lettuce and onions.23
Even if the men could not go ashore, bumboats would come out bearing local produce, including both fresh and dry fruit. In European waters, dry fruit would include figs, dates, prunes or apricots, even apples and pears. All of these were actively traded into England; some ‘dry’ grocers in London specialised in them as early as the mid-1600s and most sailors who had ventured near the Mediterranean would have been aware of them; they would also have been familiar with the various types of dried sausage. All of these would have been among the wares available on shore or brought out to the ships by bumboats. Any sailor with a sweet tooth and a few coins in his pocket would also have bought some dried fruit (and nuts) for long-term keeping as well as some of the equally available fresh fruit. Exactly what this was depended on where they were: in the Mediterranean, grapes, melons, pomegranates, figs, apricots and peaches, fresh dates, lemons and oranges (Malta was famous for the red-flecked blood orange); further south at Madeira and the West Indies, bananas, limes and pineapples and sometimes ‘alligator’ or avocado pears; and in the East Indies, all of these plus guavas, mangosteens and mangoes. In northern Europe and round the Mediterranean basin, nuts would range from hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts and chestnuts, and further afield there would be more exotic nuts such as Brazils, cashews and coconuts. The bumboats would also bring sweetmeats, cakes, jams, pickles and even, for those who had a taste for them, spices and other seasonings.
Depending on the captain, they might be allowed to buy alcohol. Captain Parker of the Amazon said in his orders that liquor might be brought onto the ship by messes who first obtained permission and ‘who know how to make proper use of it.’24 However, allowed or not, no doubt plenty did make its way aboard one way or another.
Although there are few records of below-decks men keeping poultry, it is likely that many did, for eggs if nothing else. As long as the entire ship did not degenerate into a chicken farm, a reasonable captain would not object; they did, after all, allow such pets as parrots, so why not a chicken or two?
Another interesting question on how the men ate is how did they eat their onions? This might seem an odd thing to wonder about, given the obvious thought of putting them in to boil with the meat or adding them to the soup, but there are some clues pointing in another direction. Nelson put out a general order, chiding the pursers for using the onions to put in the soup when they were intended ‘for the recruiting the health of the ship’s company’ and some of the logs of his fleet report receiving onions, then serving them out to the men more or less straightaway.25 The men could indeed have put them in the net with their meat or added them to their duff, or even roasted them on the stove. On the other hand, this was in the Mediterranean, where big mild Spanish-type onions could be had, and those can be eaten raw, either with biscuit and cheese or chopped and dressed with oil and vinegar, both of which were available. Consider the taste range and texture of the rest of their diet: bland, boiled, soft (unless their teeth were good enough to crunch the biscuit without soaking it), and you can see how those men would have relished the sharp strong taste and crisp texture of a raw onion. And if they did this in t
he Mediterranean, they would have done the same elsewhere. There is an alternative possibility, and for this we also have some evidence: Richard Ford reported to Nelson on one occasion that because of the season, the onions were too small for anything but pickling. They had onions, they had vinegar, and before they were far into a commission, they would have had empty casks and the small butter firkins. It does not take many weeks before small whole onions are ready to eat, and if the big ones are sliced, they are ready in a week or so. There are worse ways to spend your off-watch hours than preparing something tasty to eat, especially if you do it with your mates and make a social occasion of the job, yarning while you peel.
Yarning is thought to be a major part of the social life below decks and the main opportunity for it, apart from such situations as above, was at the dinner table. Greg Dening believes that yarning takes on a ritual function, tales demonstrating experience serving not only to establish hierarchies among each group of men but also to create little areas of privacy between groups.26 One can well imagine the kudos attached to having a man in your mess who had fought at one of the famous battles or served under one of the famous admirals.
One final thing about below-decks eating which no-one has mentioned is what they did when there were women on board. And there were, it seems, quite a few. There were the women who were in some quasi-official situation, such as the tradesmen warrant officers’ wives, and those who did not exist as far as the Admiralty were concerned but were there with the full cognisance of the captain: one or two are known to have signed on with men’s names and did a man’s job; others did not pretend to be men but may have been in the muster book under a man’s name to get them a wage and victuals. The question arises firstly for those who were not on the list but stayed with the ship when she sailed; these may just have ‘belonged’ to a mess and shared its food. The second sort are those who came on board when the ship was in port and stayed there for some time. Some of these would have been genuine wives and likely to bring baskets of goodies with them. But what about the others, the ‘Portsmouth brutes’ and ‘Spithead nymphs’ and their foreign equivalents? Was their price ‘Sixpence and me dinner’? Did they bring food as well as liquor on board? Did the men share their rations or lay in a stock of food from the bumboats? Alas, we may never know.
Chapter 5
HOW THE OFFICERS ATE
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AS FAR AS THE ADMIRALTY and the Victualling Board were concerned, with two small exceptions, there was no difference in the way officers and men ate. The official ration was the same, as we have seen there was to be no preferential choosing for the officers, and they were, exactly like the men, provided with no mess ‘traps’ beyond what they chose to buy for themselves. Officers were not provided with these until 1856 and then only when a ship was newly commissioned; they had to provide their own replacements. It was another forty years before anything was provided free for the men.1 The two minor exceptions were that captains were traditionally supplied with a cask of ox-tongues on commissioning a ship, a practice which was referred to as ‘ancient’ in 1703 and which carried on until 1915; and that commanders-in-chief were given ‘table money’ as an acknowledgement of their need to entertain.2
By the social mores of the time, officers, as gentlemen, were expected to eat in a better way and on a different level than the ‘people’. The obvious way to set themselves apart was to eat at different times. Although they breakfasted at 8am, as did the men, they supped at 6pm and dined at least one hour later than the men. On some ships, the captain ate an hour later than the lieutenants and warrant officers; Nelson’s dinners were served at 2.45pm. There were some practical as well as social aspects to these different timings: the officers would be available to take over some of the essential watch duties while the men ate, the younger and more agile of them (probably midshipmen) going aloft as lookouts. And since the officers’ cooks, stewards and ‘waiters’ also had to eat, they would do so with the rest of the men and be free to attend to the officers in due course.
OFFICERS’ MESSES
Captains and admirals kept their own tables, while other officers formed their own messes, where they clubbed together to buy their own wine and food, or at least some embellishments for the ration food. This must have created quite a financial problem for the more impoverished officers, who would be almost unable to resist the social pressure to pay up. One can imagine the embarrassment for a man who declined to join the ‘club’ and was forced to eat ration food at a table where everyone else was eating something better.
One of the members of the mess would be appointed ‘caterer’ for an agreed duration, of several months if not indefinitely, and he held the mess’s money and bought whatever they needed when they touched shore. In the commissioned officers’ mess this was unlikely to be the first lieutenant, whose executive duties would have kept him too busy, but there was no hard and fast rule. They chose the most suitable, and on a foreign station the choice might well have fallen on someone with a gift for languages. In Gloucester, when Edward Mangin sailed in her in 1812, the mess caterer was the marine captain. His abilities where food was concerned were adequate but with wine they were not; Mangin reports that his fellows ‘swallowed the nauseous and pernicious liquids, nick-named Port and Sherry, with wry faces both at its flavour and its costliness’.3 For this dubious privilege, each of the twelve members of the mess contributed £60 a year, a not inconsiderable sum when a junior lieutenant’s salary was barely more than that.4 £60 a year seems to have been fairly standard for that year; the purser Thomas Peckston paid the same on Volontaire.5
There were two officers’ messes on a ship of the line: the wardroom, where the commissioned naval officers, the marine officers and certain of the warrant officers such as the surgeon and master ate; and the gunroom, where the other officers ate. In frigates and smaller ships there was only a gunroom, which might have included both sets of officers or might not, depending on the individual ship. Pursers, masters and surgeons were considered ‘wardroom officers’ and joined that mess. Where there was a chaplain, he would be included, as might the admiral’s secretary in a flagship. Various people of appropriate rank taking passage as supernumeraries to join their own ship or diplomatic post would also dine in the wardroom. The ‘tradesmen’ warrant officers (the boatswain, gunner, carpenter and sailmaker) would form their own little mess in the gunroom or elsewhere; other ‘not-quite-gentlemen’ such as the captain’s clerk, the schoolmaster, the surgeon’ assistants and any supernumeraries in transit of the same type, such as Richard Ford’s clerk John Geohegan, would form another, each mess in its own little stratified world. One wonders what the financial arrangements would have been for Richard Ford. Once he had joined Victory, his important task and high salary (more than a post captain’s) should have given him a place in the wardroom despite his ‘trade’ status; the same applied to his numerous buying trips in other ships. Presumably he made arrangements to pay his share of each mess’s expenses, and no doubt returned from each trip ashore bearing useful contributions to the mess’s storeroom, not least of these being wine. Ford’s peripatetic work was probably rare outside the ranks of diplomats; there were few other people with such a need to move around so frequently.
In a ship of the line the wardroom occupied a substantial space on the lower deck, extending right aft to the stern. It had roundhouses for the officers’ toilets, flimsily-constructed cabins on either side where the officers slept, and a long table down the middle where they did all the other things which required a table. Other than the first lieutenant in a line-of-battle ship, who might have a large enough cabin to include a desk, the other commissioned officers only had enough room in their cabins to sleep and keep their sea-chest, often sharing the meagre accommodation with a gun. So at this table, they read, played cards, wrote up their journals and ate their meals.
The table, and presumably also the chairs, were supplied by the dockyard when the ship was commissioned; those tables would have bee
n constructed in such a way that they could be taken apart rapidly when clearing for action. Alexander Dingwall Fordyce regretted that they were not fitted with drawers, but the ship’s carpenter could have added them if desired. There were various methods of keeping the dishes in place in rough weather: Fordyce recommends baize-covered wedges of different sizes for keeping dishes upright (especially those containing gravy, he says) or pudding bags filled with pease and fitted with beckets and lanyards at either end. An alternative was to put several layers of wet cloths on the table to prevent plates and dishes sliding. For decanters and glasses a ‘fiddle’ was used, this being a sort of lightweight railed enclosure, again with beckets and lanyards from each corner, and a grid-work of yarn to hold the individual items in place.6
The wardroom might have had two sets of tableware: good glasses and porcelain for Sundays and visitors, tumblers and pewter or earthenware crockery for other days. Thomas Peckston reports that they ate off Delftware, a reasonably priced soft clay pottery coated with a thin opaque whitish glaze, most popularly decorated in blue. There was plenty of earthenware or porcelain to choose from; by 1770 the potteries in Staffordshire were in full swing, and the opening of the Grand Trunk Canal in 1777 connected the pottery towns with Liverpool and the coasters which would take their goods to London, no doubt pausing at Plymouth and Portsmouth en route to supply the shops in those naval ports. In London itself, the East India Company had been importing Chinese porcelain in enormous quantities since the late 1600s, using it as flooring (ie ballast) for their tea cargoes. Tableware of all sorts was readily available, though then, as now, the best quality was not cheap. Moneyed captains and admirals could have it made with their own designs; Nelsons personal collection of china included a set of ‘Baltic’ pattern china from the Coalport factory, each piece of which included his crests and coat of arms and the inscription ‘Nelson 2nd April Baltic’. It is not known whether this was used at sea or at Merton, but it does indicate what was available to those who could pay for it. Nelson also had some silver serving dishes, some of these chased with his arms and crests, delivered in their own wainscot chest, fitted and lined with green baize. These came from the big City firm of silversmiths Rundell & Bridge, and cost a total of £627.0.2.7 He also had solid silver cutlery in a set for twenty diners, again kept in a compartmentalised sea-chest.8 Cutlery might be made of steel, pewter or Britanniaware, sometimes with ivory, bone or wooden handles. Well-off senior officers might also have had some silver tea- or coffee-pots and cream-jugs.
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