by Roy Adkins
At the start of a voyage, a ship sounded and smelled like a farmyard, with animals stowed in odd corners of the decks and their fodder crammed in every available space. In the West Indies in 1798, Aaron Thomas recorded that ‘we have now on board [the Lapwing] six live sheep, five goats and six kids. They eat under the half deck, the smell of their excrement, breath etc is that of nature … this morning when I came first on deck, the smell from the live stock, under the half deck, was almost as fragrant as a cow yard.’43 In 1801 Dr Thomas Trotter, physician of the fleet, expressed his opinion about pigs: ‘Nothing has been so offensive on the decks of our ships as pigstyes. I am glad to find that Lord St. Vincent has ordered them to be moved into the waist [from the forecastle], to make room for the sick berth. Our opinion has been long at war with these nuisances: officers ought cheerfully to give up a few messes of fresh pork to their stomachs, to let their lungs have the full benefit of pure air in their sleeping and waking hours.’44
Animals had to be looked after and fed, and Aaron Thomas spoke of making hay wherever possible, as at one island off Newfoundland in 1794: ‘Being in want of hay for our livestock on board we cut a quantity of grass, made the hay on shore, stowed it in the ship. It was a serviceable and very useful article.’45 This was fine for animals that were for the common good, but Thomas thought it outrageous that cows should be looked after at public expense for the benefit of the captain and officers only: ‘Captains of 74 [guns] and larger ships of the line generally have a cow on board at sea, which they take for the sake of her milk. This is a practice I mean to find fault with. Although the expense comes from the Captain’s private purse, yet the Public may be said to have a property in one of her caretakers, he being paid by them.’46 Thomas also thought it unacceptable that the seamen were not allowed to waste water, yet the cow was allowed huge amounts so that the captain could have milk, something the men never had except occasionally if they were ill:
When a Sailor, in the morning, is sitting on a gun eating dry biscuit or oatmeal and water, and sees a bowl of new milk carrying [being carried] to the captain’s table, I wonder what he thinks of it – particularly if he is on a long voyage and that morning had carried his flour and plumbs [raisins] on the quarter deck, and there mixed his pudding before the officer of the watch, in order to prevent him embezzling of water. A cow will drink seven gallons of water a day if given to her, and I need not comment by asking how useful this seven gallons would be to seven messes, when under the vertical sun. Cheesecakes, custards, cream etc. which are produced by the new milk are desirable delicacies, but the Sailor and the Admiral are born with the same appetites.47
The bullocks were slaughtered whenever required and cut up by a butcher on board. After the landsman George Price was impressed, he was employed as a butcher, because he had previously worked in that trade. ‘I am a butcher in the ship [Speedy],’ he told his brother, ‘but at the same time I must lend a hand in every part of the ship, both below and aloft where the ship’s duty is required.’48 Of slaughtered carcasses, Dr Trotter commented that ‘There is another very filthy practice in ships when in port, of hanging their fresh beef under the half-deck, or under the booms in the waist. It is in these places exposed to the breath of the whole ship’s company, and is often brushed by them as they pass. The sight is extremely disgusting.’49
Among their rations, the men were given small quantities of butter and cheese, but these supplies soon became rancid. Anything unfit for eating had to be officially condemned and was usually returned to the victuallers, who were the contractors responsible for supplying the ships. Instead of butter and cheese, the men received alternative food such as cocoa. In warmer climates, Jeffrey Raigersfeld noted, the midshipmen were allowed to purchase butter and cheese from the purser before it deteriorated:
Our mess got a firkin of butter, and when it was half out, the butter, which was at that time one may say oil, was so full of small hairs, that however often we washed it we could not separate the hairs from the butter, so we swallowed both butter and hairs, and every day as the butter got lower in the firkin the hairs became more numerous until we got to the bottom, where was found a mouse with all its hairs off … the poor animal, as we supposed, fell in after the butter had melted, and sunk to the bottom.50
The stench of decaying cheese was thought to endanger health, and according to Dr Trotter,
The provisions which afford the most disagreeable exhalations are cheese and butter when they grow rancid. Cheese is very much disposed to putrefaction, which is greatly increased by the heat of the bread-room, where it is usually kept. Plain as this observation is, yet … there is scarcely a ship that does not condemn a quantity of cheese three or four times a year.51
If feasible, mammals and fish were caught and cooked, and on one occasion in the West Indies, Aaron Thomas noted that ‘At 4 P.M. catched a shark, measured 7 feet, cut her open and found 7 young sharks all alive, each measuring 10 inches. Our people eat the mother and all the young ones, except one which was thrown overboard.’52 Sailors relished turtles as a source of fresh food, and the best place to catch them was at Ascension Island, where ships often stopped during Atlantic voyages. Landsman Robert Hay, travelling back from the East Indies in 1809 in the Culloden, the flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, went on a turtle raid, as he related:
Shortly after leaving St. Helena we touched at the small barren island of Ascension, where we got an abundant supply of turtle. The method of catching these is as follows: On the arrival of the boat ashore the crew conceal themselves behind the rocks as near the beach as possible, and watch for the turtle coming ashore. As soon as it is a little way from the water, one or two men rush from the hiding places, seize it by the side of its shell and turn it on its back. They do not wait to convey it to the boat because they would be seen, and would prevent any more coming ashore. They just leave it in that position from which it cannot recover itself* and when they have as many turned as they want they carry them at leisure to the boat. Our men in a few hours succeeded in taking 16, the greater part of which would weigh between 2 and 4 cwt.53
Turtles were easy to keep throughout a journey, Hay explained: ‘In our water tank, and in a couple of large tubs, purposely constructed, we kept a few of them constantly in salt water, which was renewed daily. The others lay on their backs at random about the decks, their eyes were washed every morning, a wet swab was kept under their heads, and in this state they lived until made use of and some of them even till we arrived in England.’54 Gunner William Richardson said that on one voyage they lived on turtle soup:
Every evening for near six weeks a turtle was hung up to the skids by its two hind fins, the head was then cut off to let it bleed and although each one was large enough to serve our crew of three hundred men a day, little more than half a pint of blood came from each. Next morning it was cut up and put into coppers, then well boiled and served out to all hands, every part of it is good to eat, but the eggs – perhaps two or three buckets full out of one turtle – taste rather fishy.55
Soup made from turtles was an expensive delicacy, and in Britain a cheaper alternative, made primarily from the heads, hoofs and tails of calves, was becoming popular.* On board Robert Hay’s ship, the sailors were not keen on the genuine version: ‘On one occasion, turtle soup, that distinguished dish on the table of the voluptuary, was made for the whole ships crew, but as it wanted all its usual accompaniments it was but a very sorry dish. The seamen turned it into ridicule, remarking in a phrase in common use among them, that God sends meat, but the Devil sends cooks.’56
Fish were not caught and eaten as much as might be expected, which Dr Trotter regretted: ‘Sir Edward Pellew encourages his squadron off Rochefort to employ every method for catching fish, which has much retarded the appearance of scurvy in his own ship, and others. What a pity that this excellent practice is not general in the fleet, when there is nothing else for employment. Lord Duncan, in the North Sea, has always been remarkable for his indulgence i
n this duty.’57
At times fish were more than plentiful, as at the Newfoundland Banks in July 1779, where the marine John Howe described being stuck for a fortnight in dense fog: ‘We were served fishing lines and hooks and a man or two from each mess had leave to fish. A great deal was caught, so much that the People could not use it all, and [it] was left hanging about in different parts of the ship till it stunk. This very much displeased our captain.’58
Fresh bread only survived the first few days of a voyage, after which there was just ship’s biscuit, which was also called bread. The circular or hexagonal biscuits were made in victualling yards and stamped with an iron biscuit press that included the government’s broad arrow and the yard’s initial. These biscuits deteriorated quickly and became prey to insects. Writing some years after the end of the war, Basil Hall said that the methods of storing biscuit were misguided, as they should have been in airtight containers, not exposed to the air: ‘I remember once falling in with a ship, and buying some American biscuit which had been more than a year from home. It was enclosed in a new wine puncheon [cask], which was, of course, perfectly air-tight. When we opened it, the biscuit smelled as fresh and new as if it had been taken from the oven only the day before. Even its flavour and crispness were preserved so entire, that I thought we should never have done crunching it.’59
By contrast, Robert Barrett could not forget the ‘biscuit that had traversed more than half the globe, each piece of which was filled with numerous insects called weevils, – and, when struck against the table, (a most necessary preparation before putting it in your mouth,) these maggots would be scattered about in every direction. But as no better could be procured on the station, it was, of course, of no use to condemn what we had.’60 Midshipman Raigersfeld, on board the Mediator frigate in the 1780s under Captain Collingwood, also remembered the dreadful supplies: ‘The biscuit that was served to the ship’s company was so light, that when you tapped it upon the table, it fell almost to dust, and thereout numerous insects, called weevils, crawled; they were bitter to the taste … if, instead of these weevils, large white maggots with black heads made their appearance, then the biscuit was considered to be only in its first state of decay; these maggots were fat and cold to the taste, but not bitter’.61 Like Barrett, he confessed that these biscuits would have been condemned and thrown overboard ‘had it not been known no better were to be had’.62
According to George Watson, ‘The first things sailors generally buy, when they come into port, are soft bread and butter; which are considered and they truly are, a great treat to teeth, long inured to the uniform resistance of flinty biscuit.’63 Many of the men would have found hard biscuit painful to eat without soaking it, as most would have had poor dental hygiene or suffered from scurvy, with missing and decaying teeth, like the purser of Raigersfeld’s ship, with his ‘toothless jaws’.64 Henry John Whick, a musician in the marines, wrote to his sister Margaret at Wolverhampton from the Victory in June 1810, saying that he was ‘greatly at a loss for teeth. For on Friday last I sat down and had seven double teeth took out in less than half an hour, so I shall soon become an old man if I follow that for half a dozen times.’65 With or without teeth, the physician Gilbert Blane observed that seamen aged far quicker than those on land:
for, in consequence of what they undergo, they are in general short lived, and have their constitutions worn out ten years before the rest of the laborious part of mankind [manual workers]. A seaman at the age of forty-five, if shewn to be a person not accustomed to be among them, would be taken by his looks to be fifty-five, or even on the borders of sixty.66
Soft bread was also a treat for the chaplain Edward Mangin, on board the Gloucester in 1812. When he went ashore at Hollesley Bay, on the Suffolk coast, with three others, he admitted that ‘we touched at a public house, for the avowed purpose of eating soft-tommy (fresh bread and butter)’.67 Having sampled both, he said that ‘I preferred soft-tommy to Purser’s nuts (ship’s biscuit)’.68 He also said that the midshipmen often played tricks by making false announcements, such as declaring that a boat was in sight, carrying all manner of desirable goods such as ‘fresh beef, soft-tommy, Dutch herrings, new laid eggs, clean shirts, lavender-water, scented soap, snuff, onions, Chili vinegar and London-Porter’.69 To Abraham Crawford, the sight of the Essex coast in the summer of 1804 was frustrating, as they were not allowed on shore, which denied them ‘some of the good things that it produces – such as soft tommy, milk, butter, &c’.70
As they approached Batavia on Java in August 1811, just after the island had been captured from the Dutch, the sailors eagerly spotted areas of cultivation, with the prospect of fresh fruit and vegetables, and the surgeon James Prior reckoned that ‘after having been several weeks at sea, these are luxuries more grateful to the eye of a sailor, than the bones of a favourite saint to the most orthodox Catholic’.71 On long voyages the most common vegetable comprised dried pease, which were boiled so long that they turned into soup, but there are instances of vegetables and salads being grown on board, as Fremantle of the Neptune explained to his wife Betsey: ‘I have got a garden on my poop and the weather is so mild the salads grow prodigiously’72 – this was in the month of January while they were blockading Cadiz. On board HMS Jupiter in 1782, Captain Thomas Pasley had many men dying of scurvy. Because of a mistaken belief that they could be cured by being buried in soil, Pasley decided to dispense with his large garden beds: ‘To day my garden (which it has been my practice to raise daily salad in) I have given up, and buried as many men in it as possible.’73 The next day they had by chance improved so much that Pasley said ‘I have dismantled my third tray of earth likewise … How fortunate my having a garden! Little did I think of its answering so valuable a purpose – it affords comfort to my heart, the first and best of salads.’74
‘The greater part of the food of a ship’s company is necessarily salted meat,’ the physician Gilbert Blane wrote in 1789. ‘Biscuit and pease, though of a vegetable nature are hard of digestion, and though they qualify the animal food, they do not answer the purpose of fresh vegetables.’75 A few years later, in 1795, lemon juice was issued daily to prevent scurvy, with a gradual realisation that fresh produce such as vegetables, lemons and limes was essential for health. In the Mediterranean in 1804 Nelson mentioned that he was always on the lookout for fresh produce, and he was especially fond of onions, ‘which I find the best thing that can be given to seamen; having always good mutton for the sick, cattle when we can get them, and plenty of fresh water … but shut very nearly out from Spain, and only getting refreshment by stealth from other places, my command has been an arduous one.’76
British warships that were blockading French ports were at times supplied with fresh produce from England. When the Basque Roads anchorage was being blockaded, one of those on board HMS Gibraltar was surprised that ‘Bum boats frequently come from Torbay or Plymouth to supply our ships with vegetables, porter, fruit &c, and notwithstanding the many risks they run, continue to make a profitable market. They seldom have more than 3 or 4 hands, and no arms.’77
The food stored on board was at constant risk of being spoiled and eaten by vermin such as rats, mice, weevils and cockroaches. The surgeon James Prior gave some idea of how rats came on board, considering that warships were not moored too close to land:
They are first introduced on-board, in the various packages of provisions and stores; neither is it possible for any vigilance to exclude them … To ships they are a great nuisance, destroying not only stores and provisions, but, urged by the continual noise of the water, will sometimes eat their way through the timbers, thus causing leaks, which it is supposed have proved fatal to many vessels. It is remarkable, that they always swim off to shipping when the distance is not considerable, and ascend by means of the cables; in case of a rope being made fast to the shore, they may be distinguished in the night, crawling off in numbers.78
In some ships there was fishing for rats, as Aaron Thomas noted on board the L
apwing in the West Indies: ‘So plentiful are the rats in the ship, that every night I see the boys are sitting on the combings* of the twix’t decks main hatchway, a-fishing for rats, with the same philosophy as I [might] see an angler angling on the banks of a river. The boys have a line with a bait, and some oakum twirled about the bait, which when the rat gets [it] in his mouth, is entangled in his teeth, by which they draw him up.’79
When Archibald Sinclair, a Scottish schoolboy in Edinburgh, learned in April 1814 that he was to enter the navy, he immediately began to prepare all his clothes and other equipment. Of these, one item was considered essential – ‘pounds of tobacco, in half-pounds and quarters, to give to the sailors for doing odd jobs’.80 Tobacco could be bought by the men from the purser at a set price deducted from their wages, although from 1806 they were given an allowance of 2 pounds per month in the form of dried leaves complete with stalk. They usually prepared the leaves by soaking them in rum and then tightly rolling them in canvas. This package was wound with a length of wet cord, producing a cigar-shaped object about a foot long, called a ‘perique’ or ‘prick’. As the cord dried, it tightened the package and compressed the rolled tobacco, which matured while stored in this way.
Tobacco was much more commonly chewed than smoked because the only place below decks where smoking was permitted was the galley. The records of a court martial showed that on board the Prince Frederick, late at night in August 1798, a few men were sitting in the dark galley, even though the main fire of the stove was extinguished. One witness testified that ‘The Sergeant of Marines was smoking a pipe on the other side of the galley’,81 while another related that ‘the Maltese [the accused] came into the galley where there was a little fire and lighted his pipe’.82 Opportunities to smoke on deck were infrequent, particularly during bad weather, but some did smoke there, as in another court-martial testimony when the marine Edmund Riley said that: ‘Between four and five bells in the afternoon watch as near as I can guess, I was near the sick bay on the starboard side of the main deck smoking my pipe.’83 Most smoking of tobacco was with white or off-white clay pipes, and Midshipman George Jackson long remembered his visit to Diamond Rock, off Martinique, because it was there that he first tried smoking a pipe: