ISSUING THE FOOD
Unlike the modern military mess, which term tends to mean the place where you eat, to the Georgian navy a mess was a group of men who ate together. We will come back to this concept in more detail later; for now we just need to know that one man from each group was designated ‘mess cook’ and he went along every day to collect the food from the purser or steward. The steward’s room was usually aft, on the orlop deck next to the bread room. It would be equipped with bins or casks containing the biscuit, flour, pease, suet, raisins and so on, racks for cheese and the small firkins of butter, a counter and several scales. The atmosphere at issuing time would have been somewhat dusty, especially when flour was being served. For this reason the steward was known as ‘Jack-in-the-dust’; it was clearly not a job for asthmatics.
The Admiralty, through the Regulations, laid down the official ration for each man, and some rules to ensure fairness in issuing and what was to happen with poor-quality provisions. It was up to the captain of each individual ship to decide when the food was to be issued; typically, captains’ orders give a twice-daily, two- or three-hour, period for issues (7 to 9 or 10am, 4 to 7pm).1 It is when you contemplate the number of messes in a ship and think about the length of time it would take to physically weigh out and hand over the day’s food to each mess, and make a note of what they had received, you realise why it needed a generous time slot.
Remembering that the purser had to account for the food on a per man basis, and that the men were entitled to cash payments for what they did not receive, it is obvious that there must have been some foolproof way of doing this. Messes were normally identified by number (hence the expression ‘he’s lost the number of his mess’, meaning ‘he’s died’) so each mess cook would arrive at the head of the queue and sing out ‘Number whatever, all present today (or ‘Fred Bloggs absent’), and the steward would make a note, perhaps by moving a peg in a tally board or ticking each number on his list. Unfortunately no full sets of pursers’ books seem to have survived, so we cannot see the detail of these issues – whether half the messes went in the morning and the others in the afternoon, or whether different items were issued at different times. What we can reasonably infer, from the fact that we know there was little secure storage space on the mess decks where the men lived, was that they would probably only have received one day’s food at a time. So, each mess cook would take one or two mess ‘kids’ (small tubs with rope handles) along to the steward’s room and collect the day’s biscuit, pease, butter and cheese, or whatever substitutes might be required. If it was a pudding day, that would include flour, raisins and suet. Other items were dealt with elsewhere.
As well as its mess kids, each mess would have a pudding bag and one or more nets, each of these with some sort of tag or button bearing the mess number (small tally sticks with carved Roman numerals which have been recovered from shipwrecks may have been used for this purpose). As well as being for suet puddings, the pudding bag would be used for cooking the pease; the nets were for cooking meat and vegetables. The advantage of using a system of nets and bags is that you can put different items in to cook at different times. The cloth for the bags was a regulation issue: ‘And there shall be supplied, once a year, from the Victualling Office, a proportion of canvas for pudding bags, after the rate of one ell to every sixteen men.’2 We do not know the shape of the bags made with it; these may have been cylindrical but were more likely to have been round, perhaps with a draw-string to close them. Certainly the round bag would have been easier to get the pudding out of as well as to clean. There is no mention of nets in the Regulations, but a net is an easy enough thing to make with some twine and nimble fingers.
The method of allocating meat was known as ‘pricking’ and it was done by the ship’s cook. He had a large fork called (officially, not just colloquially) a tormentor, with which he would prick a piece of meat, doing this in such a way that no favouritism could be shown. Either the cook could see the waiting mess cooks but not the meat as he pricked for it, or he could see the meat but did not know who was going to get it, sometimes standing behind a screen, sometimes calling out ‘Who shall have this?’ and his mate picking a mess number at random. There is one report of this pricking being done after the meat was cooked but this begs the question of how, with no more than a big fork, the cook was able to prevent the meat falling apart in the process. The pricking process included the officers as well as the men; there was a rigid rule that ‘all are to be equal in the point of victualling’.3
The problem attached to this process is how they coped with messes of different numbers of men when meat came in standard-sized pieces (four or eight pounds for beef, two or four pounds for pork). Some of the meat must have been cut while raw to ensure that each mess got the right amount; perhaps it was all cut into one- or two-pound pieces, which would have had the added advantage of shortening the steeping time. No-one has mentioned that this was done, but nor has anyone said anything to indicate that it was not. Another thought: how did the ship’s cook know how much meat each mess should have? He could not take the mess cook’s word for it and he could not be expected to know how many men there were in each mess even when they were all there and all having the day’s meat ration in full, let alone know that one or two men were away from the ship or in the sickbay, or that the mess was having half meat and half duff. Perhaps the purser’s steward gave the ship’s cook a list (assuming that he could read) or, more likely, the steward gave the mess cook an appropriate number of counters or tally sticks which he then gave to the cook in exchange for the meat.
When the meat was fresh, there were traditionally vegetables to go with it. This was normally when the ship was in port and they had more for the first two weeks than after: on the North American station in 1813 this was expressed as ‘for fourteen days at the rate of ⅘pound of cabbage and ⅕ pound of onions per man per day, thereafter until quitting the port, ½ pound of cabbage and 1/10 pound of onions, or fruit in lieu’.4 Sometimes the amount was specified as ‘such as will satisfy the men’ and this, as well as the fact that it was sometimes referred to as ‘vegetables for the soup’, makes one wonder if it was cooked in a separate copper and ladled out, rather than being issued raw and cooked in a net or bag. Alternatively, some of the men may even have preferred their vegetables raw, relishing the crunchy texture as well as the more intense flavour.
Having said that provisions were issued on a daily basis to each mess, this did not apply to the oatmeal. The only feasible way to make porridge on a large scale would be to put it all in a large pot where it could be stirred and watched, and then to serve it out with a ladle. Although Jack Nastyface says that each mess had its own hook-pot for burgoo, the Regulations say ‘when [the cook] serves out soup or burgou [sic] he is strictly charged to do it without any partiality, giving to every man, as nearly as possible, an equal quantity’.5 Nor is it likely that they had porridge for breakfast only on the three days shown on the official table of provisions. What must have happened here is that the purser issued one-seventh of the week’s total oatmeal ration to the cook each day.
The final item which was collected by the mess cook was the drink, and tradition gave him an extra share as a reward for his efforts. The rule here was that it should be served on an ‘open deck’, where all could see fair play in both the serving and, where spirits were involved, the mixing of grog. When lemon or lime juice was issued as a scurvy preventative, this, together with its accompanying sugar, would be served at the same time, either mixed into the grog or with water as ‘sherbet’. Captains’ orders typically required the drink to be served in two halves, one during or just before the midday dinner break, the other late in the afternoon. The captain could also restrict the amount of alcohol to be issued to particular individuals or classes of people. The most likely class would be the boys, who would then be paid for their unused portion. The individuals would be those being punished for some minor crime; in this case they would not receive the value as t
hey could have used that to purchase drink from someone else. In such a situation the ‘no drink’ order would probably have involved their being moved to a separate mess for the duration to prevent their usual mess-mates sharing with them. Those who, for their own reasons, did not want alcohol, could refuse it and receive credit; it is likely that many of them took it and used it, as would many others, to pay debts or purchase favours from their shipmates. The same would have applied to tobacco: alcohol and tobacco have always been valuable commodities in closed communities.
COOKING
Every ship carried a cook, that is to say, a man with the title of cook – the only qualification he required was that he must have a warrant and be a pensioner of the Chest at Greenwich, which meant that he would often be short of a limb. This qualification was, until 1806 when the fourteenth edition of the Regulations specify it as an absolute requirement, merely advisory, dating from an order in 1704 which says that pensioners of the Greenwich hospital were to be given precedence when appointing a cook. Depending on the size of the ship, the cook had at least one able-bodied assistant and the services of a boy, who would prepare vegetables and clean out the coppers and other utensils for the daily inspection by the officer of the watch.
As well as his pension and salary, the cook had the perquisite of the ‘slush’, the meat fat which rose to the top of the coppers during cooking, and which had to be periodically skimmed off. Dudley Pope refers to it as ‘unappetising fist-sized lumps of yellowish fat’, but this is not correct.6 Not only would no self-respecting mess allow the cook to have the benefit of large amounts of such useful stuff from their piece of meat, what we are discussing is fat which has come out of the meat in liquid form and risen to the top of the cooking liquid. When it has cooled and set, slush is little different to suet or dripping. The slush had first to be offered to the boatswain for lubricating the running rigging, gun trucks and so on, but the rest was the cook’s to sell, theoretically to the tallow merchants on shore but no doubt also to his shipmates. As well as being useful for waterproofing boots, it could be used for frying fish, onions or, according to Jack Nastyface, a mixture of ox liver and pork.7 Beef slush would be in demand for making puddings. Although allowing the men to eat slush was forbidden in the Regulations on the grounds that it was unwholesome and caused scurvy, this rule was probably ignored on a grand scale if the captain and surgeon were prepared to turn a blind eye. It is, however, another situation where the Regulations were actually correct, although as with so many of these things they could not have known the reason: eating rancid fat can lead to malabsorption of other foods by the gut.8
With rare exceptions, any actual cooking skills would be minimal and learned along the way. There was certainly no training in the culinary arts for these ships’ cooks. Their main duties, as specified in the Regulations, were: to have charge of the steep tub and be responsible for the meat put into it; to ensure it was properly secured in stormy weather to prevent it being washed overboard; to ‘see the meat duly watered, and the provisions carefully and cleanly boiled…’; to see that the vegetables were ‘Very carefully washed’ before cooking; and to be frugal with fuel. This last was either coal or wood, and part of the ‘necessaries’ bought by the purser.
Other than the possibility of a friendly cook allowing occasional frying or grilling, as far as the men were concerned all their food was boiled in large boilers or coppers. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there was little facility for anything else, just a brick-built hearth with a single riveted copper boiler on top and a chimney venting to the upper deck. In 1728 iron fire-hearths were introduced as preferable to the weighty brick hearths; in 1757 the Navy Board issued stove dimensions for each rate of ship.9 These also included a double boiler with two lids and other refinements such as grilling racks and a small oven. One version had a spit operated by a fan in the chimney.
Then, in 1780, the Scot Alexander Brodie patented a new type of stove.10 Almost square, it came in several sizes (each adequate for feeding a specified number of men), the biggest of which was just over six feet square and about five feet high. It was made of wrought iron with cast iron for the fire boxes, with a ventilator and hood of copper. The whole thing was put together with nuts and screws so that it could easily be taken to pieces and individual parts replaced if damaged in battle. It had two separate fires, one of which was open at the front and was divided into three separate sections, each of which could be used independently of the others. In front of these was a facility for one or two spits extending the full width and thus large enough to roast a whole sheep or pig, a significant joint of beef or several fowls. The spit was operated by a system of chains and pulleys connected to a smoke jack in the flue. Level with, and extending across the top of the fire, was a hotplate on which pots would stand. Other larger pots could be swung onto the fire on what the patent calls ‘cranes’: simple hinged arms with cut-outs for the pot handle to rest in. Behind the fire, also extending across the whole width of the stove, was an oven and behind that was a separate, closed, fire. Above the oven and the second fire were two lidded boilers, with (for the largest-sized stove) a capacity of 100 and 150 gallons respectively.
Along the two sides and the back of the stove were rails, on which were hung separate ‘stewing stoves’. These stewing stoves could also be free-standing; if the replica examples on Victory are correct, they can best be described as small barbecues, each about a foot square, with a grill for pots to stand on over a shallow fire-box. These could have held either hot coals taken from the main fire or charcoal when the main fire was not lit. As seen on Victory, they could have been used for frying or grilling but would be more effective for keeping a saucepan of food warm than cooking large quantities. The number supplied varied according to the rate of the ship: seven stewing stoves for First or Second Rates, five for a Third Rate, three for a frigate and one for the smallest ships. According to a Navy Board directive, these stoves may have been rather larger than those to be seen on Victory and they also seem to vary in size according to the ship’s size, having a variable number of grates, trivets, furnace bars and plates in the additional bottoms’.11
The closed fire had a ventilator under the firebox ‘for carrying off foul air’, intended to go through the deck below the stove from where it could ‘be conveyed to any part of the ship, or where the sick people are kept’. The boilers vented through a condenser which produced a small amount of distilled water for use in the sick-bay. The whole thing stood on short legs to raise it from the brick or flagstone surface which protected the deck timbers. Given this clearance and the height of the stove itself, it cannot have been easy or comfortable to reach into the boilers when the fires were lighted. Victory, as those who have visited her will know, has a replica Brodie stove which sits so close to the beams above that it would have been extremely difficult to remove the boiler lids and fill or empty the boilers, and virtually impossible to reach inside and clean them. One hesitates to suggest that this replica stove is incorrectly fitted or over-large; perhaps there used to be a hatch above so that these essential operations could be done from the deck above. The boilers do have large cocks underneath for drawing off liquid, and it would have been possible to use a pump to fill them with liquid. Equally, an agile boy might have been able to wriggle onto the top of the stove and swab them out with some sort of mop, but this operation would have to be left until the stove was cold. Nor can one imagine the mate of the watch, who was meant to inspect their cleanliness, being anxious to perform such contortions. (The captain’s orders for Amazon required this inspection to take place at 3pm.)12 It would have been impossible to stir porridge in these boilers, unless that hatch was fitted above. Porridge making was more likely to have been done in very large pots on the open hearth at the front, or on separate stoves. On ships where the range was lit early in the morning, the first option is the easiest, but St Vincent’s orders in 1796 on the timing of range-lighting remark on ‘the stoves being sufficient for breakfast
’; however, if those stoves were like those to be seen on Victory today, one doubts their being big enough to provide enough for her 837 men.13
The patent Brodie stove as fitted in the Victory.
(Drawing by John McKay)
By 1810 a new stove, patented by Lamb & Nicholson, had been adopted. This was larger and had three boilers, making it possible, said one of the captains who performed trials, to cook potatoes separately. He had also, he remarked, when transporting troops to the Schelde, been able to feed 1164 men at a time; other captains reported feeding 1200 and 1300 men. But the biggest advantage of this larger stove was its ability to produce significant quantities of fresh water: up to twenty-five gallons per hour if all three boilers were used. Indeed, the Lamb & Nicholson patent was as much about providing fresh water as cooking for large numbers.14 The Lamb & Nicholson stove was fully enclosed (ie no open grate) and looks much like a giant Aga or Raeburn. As well as the boilers, it had an oven and ‘warming plates’ on the top where saucepans, frying pans and griddles could be placed.
To a certain extent each captain could influence the internal arrangements of his ship. There was not much scope for doing this with the stove itself but there may have been some with the rest of the galley; a captain who took pride in keeping a good table would have wanted more preparation space for his cook than would a captain who just regarded food as fuel. Even so, space was restricted and the reconstructed galley on Victory is probably typical. Situated amidships behind the foremast, the front (ie the end with the open grate) of the stove actually faced aft. Apart from ‘stable’ doors on either each side for access, this end of the galley is enclosed, consisting of a workbench with drawers and cupboards underneath and some windows at the back; these would have gained the advantage of any light coming down the adjacent stairway. The bench extends for the whole width of the galley (about eight feet) and is about two feet deep. Made of deal, it could be scrubbed clean and holystoned smooth. On the solid sides of the galley is space for hooks where utensils and nets of food could be hung. This preparation area was reserved for officer’s and sick-bay meals; the crew mess cooks did their preparation at their own mess tables.
Feeding Nelson's Navy Page 13
