Ship’s Menu During American Revolution
By Rick Erisman RM3, (’70-’71), Ship’s Historian
Pittsburgh, Penna.
Life aboard ship during the American Revolution was hard, at best, and the food was nothing short of awful.
Salt was the only way of preserving meat and fish and salt water was often used for cooking. For endless days a sailor might expect hard bread, soup from dried peas, salt fish or salt beef.
The most difficult commodity to store were beverages. Space had to be made for large quantities of fresh water, which after a time didn’t taste all that fresh. Some ships sailed with beer, watered-down wine or watered-down rum, called grog.
Live chickens, pigs, cows or sheep sometimes supplied fresh meat and eggs on voyages and there was fresh fish when possible.
The best foods always landed on the captain’s table. Before the 1750’s it was common for messes of around seven sailors to dip into communal pots with wooden or pewter spoons.
In the mid-1700’s James Lind, a Scottish doctor, identified fresh fruits and vegetables as the antidote to scurvy. In 1772 Captain Cook provisioned carrot marmalade along with orange and lemon juices.
The main staple of a sailor’s diet was biscuits or hardtack. Whether round or square, the recipe was the same – flour and water, with the possible addition of salt and/or sugar. The finished bread weighed less than the flour from which it was made. This is because both the water used in mixing the dough and the water, which is a natural part of the flour, evaporates during the baking.
Ship bread could be eaten “as is” right from the barrel or ground into what is essentially matzo meal. Sailors would break it into soup or tea.
Over the next five decades Congress periodically altered the ration. Tea, pickles, cranberries, raisins, dried apples and other dried fruits made the common sailor’s diet a little less grim