Feeding Nelson's Navy

by Janet MacDonald

  The stowage of a frigate’s hold after the introduction of iron water tanks, 1812. The tanks held about 400 gallons, far more than even the largest cask, but the real advantage was the lack of wasted space in a tier of close-fitting iron cubes, unlike barrels which even when nested left much of the overall volume unused. (PRO Adm 106/3122)

  There is a slight mystery about water tanks. The concept appears to have been suggested to the Victualling Board for the first time in March 1809, when Messrs Richard Trevithick and Robert Richardson sent in a printed abstract of their patent, dated 10 February 1809.18 This does not include any drawings, remarking instead that the tanks could be of any shape, but goes into great detail of how much space and weight they would save when compared with wooden casks, not to mention solving the difficulties of obtaining suitable wood for staves. They are also, they say, proof against rats, weevils, cockroaches and thieves, and they advocate their use for all sorts of cargo and dry foodstuffs as well as liquids. The Victualling Board reported on this to the Admiralty, remarked that they had consulted Sir Joseph Banks who approved the idea, and suggested that trials should be conducted. The endorsement (one of those delightful scrawls on the back of a turned-over corner of the page) from the Admiralty Secretary Sir William Wesley Pole, shows that the Admiralty agreed with this suggestion and instructed the Victualling Board to carry on.

  All this indicates that water tanks were a new idea to the Victualling Board, and yet in 1796 Samuel Bentham designed two experimental ships, Dartand Arrow, which, as well as being fitted with solid bulkheads and drop keels, had large iron water tanks. (Bentham was awarded a Gold Medal of the Society of Arts in 1800 for this innovation.19) These may have been too troublesome to consider seriously at the time; in June 1804, Nelson wrote to Captain Vincent of Arrow that while he was in Valetta, ‘If the tanks cannot be repaired, water casks must be substituted in their room’20 Unfortunately no detailed documentation of the problem with these tanks has survived, but we do know that there were eight of them, each holding 40 tons of water and that they were fixed in place; this may have been why they were not generally adopted. Arrow did not make it home in 1804, falling victim to a larger French ship, and so there are no dockyard records of the repairs needed.

  When they were accepted as a good idea, water tanks superseded the old wooden casks in the hold quite quickly, the Victualling Board ordering them in batches of one or two hundred at a time, a transition that was speeded up in 1812 when Truscott’s pump was officially introduced. This pump, or one like it, had been in use since at least 1805 and as well as merely getting water in and out of the tanks it could be fitted to a system of flexible leather tubes so water could be pumped straight to the galley coppers or into a tank on deck. This was not entirely good news: these wooden deck tanks, which replaced the old scuttle butt, were lined with lead, but despite the protests of some captains that this was a health hazard, the Admiralty could see no reason to discontinue their use.21 Another of those details which, irritatingly, are never mentioned is how they got water up for use before suction pumps were available. It can only have been done by hoisting the casks up in slings and then, perhaps, they had some sort of rigid stand for them to sit in while the contents were tapped off for the scuttle butt or the galley boilers.

  Gradually all ports organised water pipes out to jetties where ships could tie up and use their pumps, but until then there was still the task of getting water on board from ad hoc watering places; this could only be done with wooden casks and manpower. There were other hazards for these watering parties besides muscle strains and ruptures. Other than at the occasional spring which flowed out of a cliff-face, watering places tended to be marshy and infested by mosquitoes. Despite a merchant captain having remarked on the connection between mosquito bites and malaria as early as 1572, the medical profession had ignored or forgotten this; but without realising that it was the marsh-dwelling mosquitoes which carried malaria and yellow fever, naval surgeons were aware that marshes were unhealthy places.22 Dr Snipe, Physician to the Mediterranean Fleet, had told Nelson that the men were at risk and recommended that ‘as a preventative against the disease which the men are subject to [when watering in marshy places]’ they should be given a dose of Peruvian-bark [quinine] in a preparation of good sound wine or spirits’ and Nelson issued a general order to this effect. Another hazard was the local inhabitants: elsewhere in Sardinia the peasants made a practice of plying the watering parties with wine in the hopes of getting them so drunk that they would not notice the casks disappearing.23

  The last of the provisions tasks falling to the master was to observe, with a lieutenant and a mate, the cutting-up of fresh meat. Whether this was meat bought on shore or from beasts slaughtered on board, the Regulations specified that it should be cut up ‘in some convenient and publick part of the ship, open to the view of the company’.24

  It is not known exactly where vegetables and fruit were stowed. They might have been put in empty casks in the hold, where the casks would keep the rats out. Most would have arrived in nets or bags, in which case they might have been hung up near the galley. In general they do not appear to have been acquired in such large quantities that they needed stowing at all, as they would have been consumed in a few days. Some log entries show onions being ‘served out to the men’ within a few hours of arriving on board.

  LIVESTOCK

  Although not specified in the Regulations, the master would have had some involvement when livestock was brought on board, especially when large numbers were involved. Even a small live bullock would weigh about half a ton, so sixty or seventy of them would need careful positioning. The matter of getting them on board would, in itself, require some expertise where no jetty was available. With a jetty they could be herded up an enclosed gangway; without one, they would have to be slung on board, which means you first have to get them onto a boat, while leaving enough room to row it, or swim them out to the ship, having first attached some ropes to facilitate fixing the slings under their bellies (one hopes they did not lift them by their horns) and to keep their horned heads under control during the whole procedure. Alas, there was no way to control the other end, given the propensity of alarmed beasts to void their bowels, the only consolation being the availability of plenty of water to sluice down the decks.

  Sheep and pigs, of course, are much easier to deal with because they are smaller and lighter than a bullock. A strong man can pick up a sheep or pig fairly easily, especially if he can catch it unawares. Several could be carried on a boat, confined under a net and at a pinch they could be hoisted on board in a strong net. By the same virtue of their size, these smaller animals were easily accommodated on board. The carpenter built pens for sheep on the centre line, usually between the capstan and the main hatch, made so that the lower section of the pen could be pulled out for easier deck cleaning (not a major problem with sheep whose droppings are fairly dry and small).25 There are also several references to sheep being kept in the boats, although this cannot have been on a long-term basis. Pigs needed a more solidly constructed sty. This was traditionally under the forecastle but in 1801, at the instigation of the surgeons, the pigs were moved to the waist and the sickbay took over the space vacated. The pigs seem to have been allowed out for a run at intervals; there are journal reports of them wandering the deck and even eating clothing which had been left lying about. With the exception of such ships as Pasley’s Sybil (see page 19) there were probably never that many of them but they tended to be kept longer than other beasts, often purchased as piglets and kept until they were big enough to make a series of good meals. Since they were not the ship’s property the logs do not record their acquisition or their food, although on one occasion in the Mediterranean, when a merchant ship with a cargo of acorns was captured, the acorns were shared out among the squadron. In this situation the acorns are most likely to have gone to the pigs, but they were probably being carried by the merchantman to sell for human consumption; it is difficult to think that
they had sufficient value for any other purpose to make it worthwhile carrying them. They were probably acorns of the holm oak (Quercus ilex var. rotundifolia) which are prized for their chestnut-like flavour and are cultivated in parts of Spain and Portugal.

  Many ships also had a goat, kept for its milk. There are pictures of these loose on the quarterdeck during the day, but they probably spent the night with the sheep. Poultry were also kept on most ships, or at least at the beginning of the voyage. They belonged mainly to the officers and were kept partly for eggs and partly to eat. They were kept in coops which were brought up on deck during the day; they can be seen in old pictures, fitted with vertical bars in front and a trough below, so the birds could put their heads out to peck. In 1815, new instructions were issued to the dockyards to construct permanent poultry coops in the waist ‘in lieu of the moveable coops now in use’; captains of frigates could site theirs on the quarterdeck.26 The poultry would have fed on corn, crumbs and, no doubt, the beetle larvae known as bargemen. There are a couple of stories of cockerels escaping when their coops were shattered in battle, one at the Glorious First of June and another during the Battle of St Domingo; each took up a perch to crow throughout the battle, and thereby no doubt managing in the process to change their status from potential meal to much-loved ship’s mascot.

  It is possible, but unlikely, that sheep or even pigs might be housed in the manger, the area round the hawse-holes where the anchor cables came inboard. The manger was separated from the rest of the deck by a solid barrier whose purpose was to prevent water from the cables swilling round the deck. Because this area, to the uneducated eye, seems a likely place to confine animals, popular opinion believes this is where they were kept. It would, however, be difficult to get cattle into the manger without hoisting them in, and even more difficult to keep them there, quite apart from the question of what you do when anchor cables are in motion. Some pigs do seem to have been kept in the manger, although probably only on a temporary basis: Liardet remarked on the pigs ‘[disputing] the right to the manger with the fore-topmen when working the cables’, the agile topmen being chosen to pass the nippers when heaving in the cable.27 Another suggestion is that the manger was used to store fodder, citing the case of the Boyne, which is supposed to have caught fire when the hay in the manger spontaneously combusted, but this is not correct.28 Another case where a ship was destroyed by fire was that of Queen Charlotte. In her case the fire was caused by loose hay coming into contact with a lighted slow-match in a match tub outside the admiral’s cabin (ie aft). Of interest here is that the hay was being moved to be bagged and ‘pressed’, thus compressing it to take up less space. (Also of interest, although perhaps a non sequitur, is that one of the officers, when reporting events at the court martial, stated that on being informed that the ship was on fire, he replied ‘God bless me, where?’. One suspects that what he actually said was something quite different!)29 As a regular practice, storing hay, or anything else, in the manger, once again ignores the question of what you do when you need to weigh anchor.

  The new standard pattern of poultry coop introduced in 1815. (PRO Adm 106/3574)

  So where did they keep the cattle? One or two could be tucked away in a number of places, ideally, one assumes, close to a scuttle where the deck could be swilled down. Large numbers were another matter. The accounts of Thomas Alldridge, arranging cattle for the fleet off Egypt in 1798, include an entry for wood and battens and the fees for carpenters to nail them ‘to prevent the bullocks falling to leeward’; this indicates that they may have been amidships somewhere. But the best indication of common practice is the story of the unfortunate Amazon in 1804, when Nelson asked her captain, William Parker, to collect sixty cattle and thirty sheep for the squadron off Toulon. ‘Unfortunate’ because Parker and his crew took great pride in their ship and she had just been in port for repairs, finishing off with a repaint. But when Nelson asks for a favour, how can you refuse? The cattle were taken on board and tied between the guns, heads to the ship’s side and tails to the centre, and there they stayed for several days until they could be shared out among the squadron. Glascock also reports a seaman yarning about the Glorious First of June and remarking, ‘we’d three or four bullocks twixt the guns on the main deck’, so perhaps that was the standard solution to the problem. They would have been able to secure the bullocks fairly tightly, thus solving the problems of keeping them upright in rough seas and preventing their milling about dangerously in a panic (undesirable behaviour from animals armed with horns). It would also explain why cattle were thrown overboard before going into action, as Zealous did before the Battle of the Nile.30 There are several unanswered questions attached to this: if the men usually ate at mess tables between the guns, what did they do when there were cattle there, how did they practice gunnery, and did they use cleaning the deck as a punishment duty?

  The final question about cattle and sheep on board is that of feed and water. Some of the log entries which report taking on cattle also mention fodder, as do some of the accounts of the agents victualler afloat. But since they use such vague terms as ‘bags of fodder’ or ‘bundles of hay’ it is impossible to know how much fodder was bought and how long it lasted. Nelson once testily enquired why so much fodder had been bought for cattle that were soon to be slaughtered but in general the amounts listed do not seem like a lot: two or three bundles for twenty or thirty beasts. There must have been a fine line to draw between common humanity, restless hungry cattle, and the hope that reducing input will also reduce output.

  Another area on which information is sparse is that of slaughtering animals on board ship. What follows is, therefore, a resumé of the processes on land, with some suggestions as to how the process might have been done on board ship. With pigs or sheep, you restrain them, pull back their head and slit their throat, then hoist them up by the back legs to drain the blood. On board ship, there were plenty of beams high enough for this purpose, and one assumes that a piece of old sailcloth would have been spread out to protect the deck and a tub used to catch the blood. Bullock carcasses, being bigger, would have needed something higher than a deck beam to hang from, so this was probably done on the weather deck using a yard or tackle from the main stay. With bullocks, the process starts with pulling their head down and hitting them, very hard, on the forehead with the blunt end of a pole-axe, then once they are down, using the sharp end to finish them off before cutting their throats. Once the bleeding has stopped, the next step with a pig is to immerse it in scalding water and scrape off the bristles before hoisting it up again. After this, all the beasts were gutted (as with the blood, presumably into a tub) and the sheep and cattle were skinned; this is most easily done when the carcass is warm. The carcass was then left to cool for several hours before cutting it up. Pig skin stays on the meat; as we will see in the next chapter, they had facilities for roasting and would not have wanted to forego the crackling.

  The tallow was scraped off the skins and collected to be sold, with the oxhides, at the next opportunity. These hides were obviously only rudimentarily dressed, as there are many reports of their becoming maggoty and stinking. Sometimes they became so noisome that they were declared ‘a nuisance to the ship’ and dumped overboard. Although not specifically mentioned in any of the logs or accounts the author has seen, the sheepskins may also have been sold on shore. On the other hand, there are many things you can do with a sheepskin, from making warm waistcoats to padding a damaged limb, assuming that you have someone on board who knows how to dress the skin. There are other usable by-products; the horns of the cattle could have been used for powder-horns or to make drinking mugs, and sheep’s knucklebones are traditionally used as gaming pieces or dice.

  To what extent they had experienced butchers on board is not known but at a time when many beasts were killed on the farm it would not have been difficult to find a crew member who knew what to do; the author has not seen any listed as such in muster or pay books. How much of the offal was used would
also depend on whether anyone knew how to deal with it, and, perhaps, weather conditions; cleaning-out intestines to make sausage skins without damaging them would not have been easy in a rough sea. Mentions of any specific pieces of meat are rare but Jack Nastyface mentions feasting on bullock liver fried with salt pork and St Vincent ordered his officers to take the heads as their share, as a good example.31 This makes one wonder whether the crew were inclined to refuse this sort of meat; certainly most of it needs more complicated preparation than simple boiling.

  THE PURSER

  Captain, master and lieutenants had some involvement with the handling of provisions; the purser spent most of his time on them and was responsible for them financially. He was a combination of paid employee and entrepreneurial businessman, allowed to sell certain items to the crew. He was appointed by warrant, which meant that unlike the commissioned officers, who could move from one ship to another comparatively easily (often following the senior officer whom they regarded as their patron), he tended to stay with one ship for many years. The main reason a purser would want to move ship would be to get into a higher-rated ship and thus increase the magnitude of his ‘business’ as well as his salary. Until 1782 they had been allowed to go straight into the higher-rated ships, but Sandwich, as First Lord of the Admiralty, put a stop to this, insisting that pursers started their career in a sloop.32 In 1813 an order was issued that pursers had to pass an examination by three experienced pursers before obtaining their warrants.33 In theory the purser’s accounts from one ship had to be passed before he was appointed to another; in practice the Victualling Board would not block his appointment unless they suspected him of fraud or he had a big debt with them. Even then, if they saw no other way of recovering his debt they would allow him to go to a new ship.