by Roy Adkins
One of the Lieutenants at the Rock insisted on trying to make me a disciple of the ‘fragrant weed’, and failed most disastrously in his kind intentions. I became so horribly ill, and took such a dislike to him, and tobacco, and the place in consequences, that I never think of them without a qualm. Perhaps I lacked energy to persevere and conquer, but I have never touched tobacco since, and perhaps am all the better for it.* From being considered a filthy indulgence, it has reached the character of a gentlemanly habit, so I must not abuse ‘what all the world approves.’ A long way off, and in the open air, I do not mind it much, and even this is a great admission to make. There are some young fellows I know who, when they come to see me, are sure to have a stale pipe in their pockets, and I can scent them from afar off; but they assure me the more beastly a pipe looks and smells, the nicer it is to smoke. So much for taste.84
Cigars were also smoked and snuff taken by some officers, both of which Thomas Fremantle admitted to his wife: ‘I find I don’t take so much snuff as I used to, but I have got perhaps a much worse habit which is smoking Segars [cigars], – which does not agree with me, notwithstanding which I continue to do so like a child and deserve whipping.’85 A few weeks after Trafalgar, when he was blockading Cadiz, Fremantle mentioned to Betsey that ‘my snuff is just out and I shall be obliged to manufacture more from the Ships Tobacco, I don’t take more than I did, but full enough’.86
It was far easier to chew tobacco, and a quid of tobacco would last all day, could be kept overnight and was usually good for a second day’s chewing. Those men who chewed tobacco would have been more likely than most to spit, but random spitting was unacceptable. Captain Robert Barlow of the Phoebe frigate ordered that ‘It is forbid to spit about the decks. Spitting boxes to be put in different parts of the ship to be filled with sand by men appointed.’87
While food could at least be disguised by cooking, the water was more difficult to stomach, though much of it was used for diluting rum or cooking. The men were allowed to drink water from a cask placed on deck known as a scuttle butt, which had a square hole or scuttle cut in it. Sometimes a marine was posted by the scuttle butt to prevent wastage, because obtaining fresh supplies for hundreds or thousands of men in a squadron was a constant challenge. Water was generally collected from rivers, which meant loading empty wooden casks into the ship’s small boats, going on shore, filling them and hauling them back into the boats, before returning to the ships. The casks were stored in layers or tiers in the hold, the bottom layer resting on the shingle ballast. Fresh water was pumped up from the hold or else the casks were hauled up on deck.
Watering was regarded as one of the hardest jobs of all, causing ruptures and leading to the men contracting malaria in mosquito-ridden areas. Yet it provided a welcome opportunity to go ashore. Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Pole, in September 1799, ordered boats to stop watering at Torquay, on account of
Complaint having been made to the Commander in Chief that the boats sent on the watering service to Tor Quay have robbed and destroyed the gardens and orchards and otherwise done considerable damage to the neighbourhood, to the great disgrace of those who have been guilty of such riotous and improper conduct.88
When Nelson’s squadron was desperately looking for the French fleet that had escaped from Toulon, a few months before Trafalgar, they paused near Cagliari in Sardinia to obtain water, and Thomas Marmaduke Wybourn, a twenty-nine-year-old marine lieutenant, described the operation:
Everything being in readiness to receive the water, all the boats proceeded on shore with casks etc., and in a short time tents were pitched, guards stationed, triangles [lifting tackle] erected … Never was a place better adapted for watering a fleet: the boldness of the shore admits the ships to approach within a few hundred yards, and about a dozen paces from the sea shore is a delightful river, divided only by a bank from the sea, and empties itself into it; it is a running serpentine stream from the interior, of course very clear. The boats are ranged along close to shore, the casks rolled over to the river, and when filled by one party, are returned to the boats, hoisted in by the triangles and rowed to the ships, and so return. The tents pitched on shore are for the guards who attend these proceedings … In this manner is a fleet of 15 ships completed with water for 12,000 men for 4 months and in the space of 2 days and some hours.89
A different method of watering was described by Jeffrey Raigersfeld on the island of Dominica in the West Indies: ‘The process of filling was as follows: The casks were landed from the boats and rolled to a deep part of the river, filled and bunged up; they were then rolled down again into the salt water, when the men floated them, and fastening them one to the other, they were towed on board, and as the wind blew off shore, the boats were soon alongside the ship, which was at anchor between two and three miles off shore.’90 A good supply was not always easy to find, though, and on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, William Richardson spoke of their desperate search for water:
As we were in want of fresh water, the people were sent about to see if there was any … As we could find no watering place here we had recourse to digging holes in the ground for each empty cask and generally in the course of a night they would be filled by the morning, by the water rising up to the bung holes, but this was a tedious method, moreover the water was brackish perhaps by being too near the sea shore, further inland it might have been better, however we made it answer for cooking.91
The worst water was from the River Thames, and when he was a merchant seaman, the American Joseph Bates said that at London they left the dock and then ‘commenced filling our water-casks for our homeward journey with the river water that was passing us, finding its way to the great ocean; I thought, how could a person drink such filthy water. Streaks of green, yellow, and red muddy water, mixed up with the filth of thousands of shipping, and scum and filth of a great portion of the city of London. After a few days it becomes settled and clear, unless it is stirred up from the bottom of the water-casks.’92 Bates was subsequently pressed and served on board HMS Rodney in the Mediterranean, where, he said,
we were emptying out all our old stock of fresh water; the ground tier [bottom layer of barrels] was full of the same river water from the Thames, only a little further down from London, and had been bunged up tight for about two years. On starting the bung and applying our lighted candle, it would blaze up a foot high, like the burning of strong brandy. Before stirring it up from the bottom, some of the clear [water] was exhibited among the officers in glass tumblers, and pronounced to be the purest and best of water.93
The wooden casks were reused again and again, and a few weeks of storage made even the cleanest water stagnant and slimy. Sailing back to England from Gibraltar, Marine Lieutenant Wybourn told his sisters that the passage was terrible, with insufficient provisions, ‘but the greatest misfortune was want of water: we were allowed only one pint a day for these last five weeks, and this was so bad sometimes, as to oblige us to hold our noses while drinking’.94 During his very first voyage in the English Channel, on board the Phaeton, Midshipman James Scott was recovering from seasickness and decided to try something to eat and drink, but ‘the liberal portion of salt junk and stinking water brought within hail of my olfactory nerves threw me on my back again’.95 Edward Mangin thought that a lot of the men’s illnesses were caused ‘by the foul water they are obliged to drink’.96
Iron tanks for water in the hold began to replace wooden casks towards the end of the war, but Archibald Sinclair could never forget the old methods: ‘Before iron tanks were invented, the water on board ships was generally almost indescribably bad. The stench was abominable, long flakes of green grassy looking substances floated about, and if left alone for a time in a tumbler, the sediment was frightful to look at.’97 Attempts were made to purify the water and the casks, mostly by adding lime. Rainwater was also collected, and sea water was distilled using apparatus fixed to the galley stove. On board the Favourite in October 1805, the surgeon Francis Spil
sbury mentioned their charcoal purification system: ‘The machine for purifying our water was by some means stopt. The cooper was therefore ordered to open it: the principle was by conveying the water through charcoal, by which method, the most putrid water becomes immediately sweet; but it was insufficient to supply the whole ship’s company.’98
Water frequently ran short, as when HMS Boston was accompanying a convoy of merchant ships from England to Newfoundland in 1794 in poor weather. Aaron Thomas noted the captain’s attempts to economise: ‘As we made no very great progress on our voyage, Captain Morris found it necessary to be careful of our expenditure of water, and as on this day [10 May] flour and plumbs were served to the ship’s company to make puddings of, orders were given that the men must go to the scuttle butt on the quarter deck for water, and there mix their puddings to prevent a waste of water.’99
Alcohol was safer and more palatable to drink than water, and certainly more acceptable. In 1789 Gilbert Blane commented:
‘As the solid part of sea diet is very dry and hard, and as the salt it contains is apt to excite thirst, a freer use of liquids than at land is necessary, particularly in a hot climate. It has been the custom, as far back as we know, to allow seamen the use of some sort of fermented liquor. We need hardly inquire if this is salutary or not, for it would be impossible at any rate to withhold it, since it is an article of luxury, and a gratification which the men would claim as their right. There is a great propensity in seamen to intoxicating liquors, which is probably owing to the hardships they undergo, and to the variety and irregularity of a sea life.100
It was certainly true that the twice-daily issues of grog were the highlights of a sailor’s day, served with their dinner and supper. The seaman Robert Wilson explained the ration: ‘In our naval service, each man is allowed a quart [two pints] of grog a day if grog is served out twice in the course of the day; if not, ½ pint of wine and one pint of grog. Now it is mixed thus: – 3 gills of water to one of rum or brandy, which is called 3-water grog and is very good, but when a fourth gill of water is added, it is insipid.’101
Grog was originally one part rum to four parts water with the addition of lemon juice and brown sugar, a drink devised by Admiral Edward Vernon in 1740 in an effort to reduce drunkenness, with lemon juice being added to help prevent scurvy. Rum was most readily available in the West Indies. Because Vernon’s nickname was ‘Old Grogram’, from the grogram* that he habitually wore, the name ‘grog’ transferred to the drink. In Nelson’s navy, the rum allowance was a quarter of a pint at a time (a total of half a pint a day), but this was in ‘wine measure’, roughly one-fifth less than an imperial half-pint and equivalent to the modern US half-pint. Each serving was usually topped up with three-quarters of a pint of water to make a full pint, but as a punishment might be watered down further or even withheld.
Everyone was given the same allowance, even the boys, but payment could be received instead of taking the full amount. Boys unaccustomed to drinking alcohol quickly adopted the habit, as George Jackson found when he first went on board the Trent as a young midshipman. He was invited to dine by the captain, Edward Hamilton:
Sir Edward turned sharply to me and said, ‘Take a glass of wine, sir.’ ‘No, sir, thank you,’ I replied timidly, but was electrified by his shouting out savagely, ‘What, sir. Devil take it! Take one directly.’ I mechanically filled a glass and gulped down the contents, which might have been physic [medicine] for all I knew at the moment. ‘Now, sir,’ rejoined my tormentor, ‘do you ever drink grog?’ ‘No, sir, never,’ I gasped out faintly, expecting an order forthwith to drink a hogshead on the spot; but I was spared so much by his adding, ‘Then I shall give orders that you are to have some every day; you look as if you needed it.’102
Grog was actually only given when the beer ran out. The official beer allowance was a ‘wine measure’ gallon a day, equivalent to a modern US gallon, or four-fifths of an imperial gallon. Beer was much more commonly drunk by the seamen and was usually fairly weak small beer brewed by the Admiralty. Because beer did not keep well, it was drunk during the initial stage of a long voyage and then replaced by grog. According to Gilbert Blane, ‘The common quantity of small beer allowed daily is so liberal that few men make use of their whole allowance.’103 Spruce-beer was brewed by the ship’s crew wherever possible. Aaron Thomas said that when in Newfoundland they brewed this beer on shore, as spruce trees were widespread. One place was ‘called Brewing Cove, so called because Men of War, who come to anchor in this bay, brew their spruce beer in this cove. Here is a small hut erected to shelter the men from the rain … The spruce beer, when brewed, is laid on the ground in casks to work. The ship’s boats then take it on board for use.’104 Captain Fremantle, while enduring tedious blockade work off Cadiz in September 1805, only a short time before Trafalgar, wrote to his wife: ‘I have just got some spruce given me by Sir Robert Calder, and am brewing spruce beer, this will amuse me for some days, one is really glad to catch at anything for variety.’105
In the Mediterranean especially, wine was often given out in the ratio of one pint of wine in place of one gallon of beer, but sailors preferred beer or grog. Red wine had the derogatory nickname ‘blackstrap’ and was of poor quality, full of sediment and unpopular. According to George Watson, ‘The wine generally drank by seafaring people at Gibraltar, is Malaga, a sweet port-coloured liquor, and another species by the tars called “black strap” rough unpalatable heady stuff; these cost about fourpence a quart, and the best not more than a shilling.’106 To be stationed in the Mediterranean, where this wine was commonly given to seamen, was known as being black-strapped. The fiery white Spanish Mistela wine was more acceptable, although Basil Hall reckoned it was ‘a most insidious tipple, called Mistela in Spanish, but very naturally “transmogrified” by the Jacks into Miss Taylor’.107
According to Archibald Sinclair, grog was also a form of currency:
The standard of value, the medium of circulation on board a man-of-war, was a ‘glass of grog.’ If any one had propounded the question, ‘What is a glass of grog?’ sailors would have been as much puzzled to define what constituted the exact quantity or quality as the financiers to determine the value of a pound sterling. On Saturday night, each sailor that looked after a midshipman’s hammock was considered entitled, by the usages of the service … to a glass of grog … the climax as to the uncertainty of the currency question was, when an old salt, who had really been attentive, smoothed your pillow, and made your bed without once failing during the week. As you presented him with an empty measure, and began to pour into it the much coveted spirit, ‘Say when,’ is all that passes; but an air of abstraction comes over his old weatherbeaten face; no notice is taken till it comes to be within a thimbleful of running over – ‘Stop, sir, a little water.’ The thimbleful of water is added, which converts it from a dram into a glass of grog, and the currency question is settled for a week.108
Sailors were frequently ‘groggy’ – in some state of drunkenness, and George Watson described a drunken shipmate as ‘rather more sail than ballast, that is, groggy’.109 Many of them lived only for the next issue of grog and drank to excess if possible. According to Samuel Leech, ‘One of the greatest enemies to order and happiness in ships of war is drunkenness. To be drunk is considered by almost every sailor as the acme of sensual bliss; while many fancy that swearing and drinking are necessary accomplishments in a genuine man-of-war’s-man. Hence it almost universally prevails.’110 A good number were undoubtedly alcoholics, doing everything they could to obtain more to drink, including selling their own clothes. Robert Wilson of the Unité off the island of Tenedos in 1806 said that – bizarrely – the men sold their buttons to buy wine there:
For a few horn buttons the boat’s-crew could get as much wine as they could drink; it was laughable to see them on their return on board with scarcely a button on their clothes. So fond are seamen in general to liquor that I have heard them declare sooner than lose half a pint of liquor they woul
d rather lose so much of their blood; yet it is odd to see how willingly they will part with their grog as payment for favours received, for sailors with all their faults are not void of the sense of gratitude.111
Wilson’s captain punished the crew by introducing weaker 4-water grog, because ‘he was really tired and annoyed by continually flogging of men, only for that beastly habit of drunkenness, so ill becoming an Englishman’.112 In vain, because a week later, Wilson recorded, ‘Two men were punished for intoxication. Captain Campbell ordered the men that messed with them to have their grog extra watered for not reporting them when intoxicated, but the sailors in general would rather screen than report a brother sailor in his cups.’113
Daniel Goodall explained how they were able to get so drunk:
It may be a matter of wonder to the reader, who knows that each man has a limited allowance, to guess where the liquor came from to produce intoxication, seeing there was no source from which it could be procured save from one another. Some of the hardest drinkers, however, would at times take what might be called a sober fit, and would then save their allowance day by day for weeks together in bottles, when they would either sell it to those who could purchase of them or assemble their chosen friends for a carouse – too frequently ending with confinement in irons and a parade at the ship’s grating [a flogging] afterwards. Of course, such practices were very strictly prohibited in the navy, but were still very common on board even the best of ships, all efforts to the contrary notwithstanding.114