Even more telling is the fact that there were several serious outbreaks of scurvy in the fleet during 1803 and 1804 and several more after Spain declared war against Britain in December 1804, thereby cutting off a major source of fresh food.33 There would have been no difficulty in obtaining a plentiful supply of lemon juice for the fleet, as lemons were grown extensively in Sicily; Nelson was fully aware of this, having sent his physician, Dr Snipe, to buy large stocks of lemons both for his own fleet and to send back to England. The fact that scurvy continued to be a problem indicates that this supply was not fully utilised.
This demonstrates that the general thinking of many modern writers that everyone, from the Board of Admiralty all the way down to individual ships’ captains and surgeons, was convinced that citrus fruit or its juice was a sure preventative of scurvy is incorrect; if they were convinced, captains and surgeons would not have needed to be told to buy lemons or issue the juice. There is other evidence of this lack of conviction: as commander-in-chief, Nelson could have issued a general order on the subject of issuing lemon juice, but his order book does not include such an order; only one on the format in which the remaining stocks of lemon juice should be reported.34 In addition, the large batch of ships’ logs which were examined during the author’s research did not show regular receipts of lemon juice or lemons in the quantities which would have been required for a standard regular issue.
This fleet in the Mediterranean was not the only one which continued to suffer from scurvy. In 1811 the commander-in-chief of the East India station, Rear-Admiral William Drury wrote of the ‘ravages of scurvy and dysentery’ in his fleet. It was probably the dysentery which caused, or at any rate worsened, the scurvy: dysentery raises the pH of the contents of the gut and in the process destroys the ascorbic acid. In a vicious circle, sailors with lowered resistance due to scurvy were also easy victims to dysentery. The term dysentery does not appear frequently in the ships’ medical reports; ‘flux’ does and whether this flux was full-blown amoebic dysentery or just diarrhoea caused by bad water or failure to wash food or hands, the effect would be much the same. Drury found it difficult to obtain lemons or limes, although one wonders why supplies could not have been taken out to him by the East India Company ships. Equally, it is strange that he did not know about the coconut, which should have been easily available on the East Indies station; it had been known as early as 1766, when Commodore John Byron reported using it on his circumnavigation. Although comparatively low in Vitamin C, at 2mg per 100g of the fresh flesh or milk, if sufficient was available it would have done the trick.
However, Drury did know of another good cure: nopal (Opuntia) was believed on the East Indies station to be the best remedy for scurvy and hepatitis. Its alternative name at the time was ‘Mexican cochineal plant’, from the cochineal beetle which lives on it (Dactylopius cocchus), but we know it as the Prickly Pear. The varieties we know today are very spiny; however, there is a spineless variety (O. ficus-indica) which may have been what was available there. Alternatively, they may have used a variation of the technique used today in Mexico where the spines are burned off with a blow-torch; Georgian sailors could have used the ‘bundle of brushwood on a stick’ method to singe the spines before handling them. The recommended dose was ‘one leaf per man per day’in the soup, or a pickled version which could be made on board. Nopal’s properties were discovered by the Physician General to the Madras army, Dr Anderson, who got his first plant sent out from Kew Gardens by the good offices of Sir Joseph Banks.35 He reported to Banks in 1808 that several East India Company ships were using it to good effect; unfortunately it is not one of the items listed in the standard works on food composition so we cannot know its vitamin levels.
Drury was a believer in nopal and grew large amounts in his garden at Madras, offering as much as was wanted to any ship’s captain who cared to come and fetch it. He recommended its use in a pickle, with vinegar and various spices, including allspice. Even here, someone had to interfere and change the recipe on the grounds of cost. Drury had died and his pickle recipe was altered by the resident naval commissioner, Peter Puget, who decided because the price was too high, to omit the allspice. As it happens, it did not matter but how could he have known that? If they were prepared to accept that the bark of the cinchona tree could have such a valuable effect on fevers, why should the seed of allspice not have been effective with scurvy? But no, a few pennies were more important, as they were deemed to be later when limes were substituted for lemons. In fact, this view of the cheapness of limes proved to be faulty; they turned out to be more costly and less effective than lemons. It was not until the 1930s, when Casimir Funk and a sequence of other chemists identified the four main dietary deficiency diseases (scurvy, beriberi, pellagra and rickets) as such and went on to isolate and then commercially produce Vitamin C that there was a cheap and effective antiscorbutic available for those whose diet denied them the Vitamin C they needed.
FOOD FOR THE SICK
So much for the food that might have prevented sickness. When they went on the sick list and were moved to the sickbay or to a hospital, the responsibility for feeding the men shifted to the surgeon. He decided whether they should be on full, half or low diet, liaised with the purser on how much of their official ration they should have, and with the captain when the need for mutton broth required a sheep to be killed, or when the sick needed wine at a time when the rest of the crew was on beer or spirits.
The general theory was that their consumption of ‘salt provisions’ should be, if not completely stopped, restricted to what was needed to make gruel or ‘sowins’, which is a type of very thin oatmeal porridge. The dictionary definition (which also offers the alternative spellings of sowens or sowans) suggests this was traditionally made with the floury residue left in the husks of oats after crushing, conjuring up the picture of extreme desperation, washing the inedible husks for what little nutriment they could yield. Another name for this dish was flummery, originally sweetened and with milk added, it gradually developed through the eighteenth century to a rich dessert with cream and Madeira, and eventually fruit. Hannah Glasse offers a ‘French Flummery’ with cream, rose water and orange-flower water; fit for the Admiral’s table perhaps, but too rich for the sick bay. Since there would have been no oat husks on board, the sowins would have been made with the oatmeal that was part of the sick men’s usual ration. The Regulations go on to say that the men’s allowance of flour should be used to make soft bread or puddings and that ‘these, together with their molasses or sugar, when allowed, and raisins, the necessaries in [the surgeon’s] charge, and portable soup, will constitute a wholesome diet for the sick’.
The surgeons’ ‘necessaries’ were provided ready-packed in boxes. There seem to have been three sizes of box: half-single for 25 men, single for 50 men and double for 100 men, each meant to be sufficient for three months. In each case, the amount of contents doubled up as did the number of men they were meant for; although it does not specifically say so in the Regulations, this must have meant the number of men in the complement, not those in the sick bay, so Victory, with her 850 men, would have eight double and one single box for each three months of her expected service. The double box contained, as well as linen and flannel, one saucepan, one canister each for tea and sago, 4½ pounds of tea, 4 pounds of sago, 8 pounds of rice, 16 pounds of barley, 32 pounds of soft sugar and 2 ounces of ginger (presumably this would have been the powdered sort), except in the Mediterranean where the barley was replaced by macaroni, and in the West Indies where it was replaced by arrowroot. Replacements of items used were provided by the local officer of the Sick and Hurt Board on production of certificates of what had been legitimately used; on stations where there was no such officer, the surgeon could purchase these necessaries to the tune of twopence per man per month. Portable soup and lemon juice were dealt with on a much longer list of drugs and equipment for the sickbay, including pillows, night caps, bed-pans and spitting pots.36
&
nbsp; The list of dietary necessaries had changed over the years. The version quoted above was that for 1806; earlier versions had included cocoa or chocolate, garlic, shallots, almonds, tamarinds and the spices nutmeg and mace. Toward the end of the Napoleonic Wars, after the development of canning, tins of ‘preserved’ veal and soup joined the list. In naval hospitals on shore, milk, sometimes eggs, vegetables and, after about 1805, potatoes joined the list. Milk also featured on the diet on hospital ships; they must have carried goats or even milch cows. Goats were quite common on all ships, and although they usually belonged to the officers, it is unlikely that their milk would have been denied the sick. It was also common practice for delicacies from the officers’ tables to be sent to the sickbay.
With the exception of these goodies from the wardroom, the general trend of the diet for the sick seems to have been soft and non-challenging food, rather like the diet in Victorian schoolrooms, with the addition of those spices to add some flavour. Men on full diet, probably those in the latter stages of recovery, did get some meat; the others only got meat broth or soup, with those soft puddings or gruels. To men used to large amounts of solid food, this diet would not have encouraged malingering. But, in northern Sardinia at least, there were those grapes, possibly a forerunner of that classic gift of hospital visitors.
Method of suspending a small barrel. This is how the officers’ beer or wine would be kept in the wardroom, with a tap fitted to facilitate pouring.
Plan of the victualling yard at Deptford as it was in 1813. The size of the establishment can be gauged by some of the statistics quoted in the key: the slaughter house could accommodate up to 260 oxen, and the hog hanging house 650 pigs; the bakehouse had twelve ovens; and the spirit vats held 56,000 gallons. Besides the large storehouses, there were ranges of houses for the yard officers and craftsmen. (PRO Adm 7/593)
A mess table on the Victory. Note the square plates, cow’s horn drinking mugs and ‘half-barrel’ mess kids. The hammocks would not normally be slung during mealtimes. (Photographs of HMS Victory by kind permission of the Commanding Officer)
Detail from a contemporary print, showing the use of a ‘triangle’ to lift a heavy object – here a gun, but it was also used to lift barrels from beach to boat.
The preparation area in the galley on the Victory. The long wooden object next to the half-door is a peel for moving bread and dishes in and out of the oven. Note the ever-present rats.
Side view of the replica Brodie stove on the Victory. Note the buckets and the chain for driving the spit. This was operated by a smoke-jack in the chimney. The square open container is a salt box, which housed two ready-use powder cartridges, so was presumably only kept in this position when the ship was in action (when the stove would be doused).
Another view of the replica Brodie stove on the Victory. Note the condenser (top left), the large tubs for steeping salt meat and receiving liquids from the boilers, and the cocks (bottom left) for pouring these off.
The open fire at the front end of the Brodie stove on the Victory. Note the different facilities for standing or hanging cooking pots and kettles.
Side view of the replica Brodie stove on the Victory. From top right, clockwise, note the lids of the coppers and their extreme proximity to the beams above, the hanging stoves on the rail, the open fire-box (this is underneath the coppers), the closed door to the oven and the supports on which the spit would be mounted.
Casks stowed in the hold of the Victory, with the bottom tier nestling in shingle ballast.
Cheese racks in the purser’s steward’s room on the Victory.
A close-up of the preparation area in the galley on the Victory. Note the stoneware bottles and the wooden pestle and mortar for grinding spices.
CONCLUSIONS
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WE HAVE ALREADY LOOKED at two of the standard academic questions that should be applied to any study of military history. There are two more which we should now ask: ‘Did they do a good job?’ and ‘Would they have done a better job if they had done it differently?’ In answering these questions, especially the second, it is necessary to remember that we are dealing with a very different world from our own and that what appears obvious with hindsight was not necessarily so obvious at the time. But first we must consider the two fundamental points: who ‘they’ were, and exactly what the job was.
It would be easy to define ‘they’ as the Victualling Board and its head-office employees; they were the people who gathered the ingredients of the seaman’s diet and sent them off to arrive on his plate. But they were not the only people involved: there were many others along the way who were involved in getting the job done and getting it done properly. As we have seen, this included the manufacturing, packing and despatch personnel at the Victualling Board’s depots at home and abroad, the individual commanders-in-chief who directed the intermediate stages of delivery, and the various people who dealt with delivery on board the ships – the captains, the pursers, the masters and lieutenants, the cooks and the stewards. Each of these, as we have seen, was concerned to get the food on the plate and then to leave the men in peace while they ate it, and each understood the importance of keeping the men well fed. There was a mechanism in place for complaints when things went wrong, but there seem to have been very few such complaints, certainly not enough dissatisfaction to cause a major mutiny such as affected the French Brest fleet in Quiberon Bay.
So just what was the job? To put it very broadly, you could say it was to provide the fuel that enabled the fighting machine to perform well in the face of the enemy. The key phrases here are ‘to perform well’ and ‘in the face of the enemy’. There can be no doubt that the British naval fighting machine did perform well throughout the period we are considering. Ignoring the manpower losses caused by disease, which affected the enemy as badly if not worse than they did the British, such failures as did occur during the various wars from 1750 to 1815 were caused by political indecision, grand strategic failures and some poor senior appointments, not by the lack of enthusiasm of the fighting man on the spot (you might say that the enthusiasm was lacking at Spithead and the Nore in 1797, but the men involved in those mutinies made it clear that they were prepared to do their duty if the enemy threatened). There are numerous little stories that show that enthusiasm. Typical of these is Sir Sidney Smith’s letter to Earl Spencer in 1795, describing his strategy of sending his ship’s launch ‘to seek adventure’ whenever they were close to land. He commented that not only did he have difficulty in selecting a crew from amongst the many volunteers, but that even the petty officers attempted to ‘slip in and secrete themselves in order to go’.1 Whilst a man might fight on a badly- or inadequately-filled stomach, he will not do so with enthusiasm and consistent success. There is a vulgar modern military aphorism which neatly sums it up: ‘You can’t **** on cornflakes’. So let us put aside the two big myths about Georgian naval food: it was not skimpy and it was not foul.
‘In the face of the enemy’ implies that the fighting man is in that position and can stay there for as long as it takes to do the job; in order to stay on station, whether the task is blockading or actively seeking out the enemy and fighting him, that ‘fuel’ has to be delivered regularly and in a timely fashion. It has been argued, to good effect, that the failure to do this, due to the inexperience of the Treasury staff who were given the task of supplying the British army in North America during the War of Independence, was the primary cause of the British failure in that war.2 The Victualling Board had many decades of experience to call on, and had set up systems to supply provisions wherever they were needed. With very few minor hiccups, they did so.
There were many subsidiary aspects to that broad task. Quality standards had to be established and maintained, and there had to be a system for dealing with sub-standard items. Opportunists and deliberate fraudsters had to be discouraged or caught and punished. Justice had to be seen to be done by discouraging the sort of favouritism that can lead to industrial unrest. An
d last, but by no means least, the public purse (or as they saw it, the King’s purse) had to be protected from excessive spending. Whilst the commanders-in-chief and shipboard personnel had their part to play in these desired results, the drive to achieve them had to come from the responsible body at the top of the pyramid, the Board of Admiralty. Here, with a couple of reservations, we can accept that the public employees did a fair job. The reservations relate to their attitude to the peripheral personnel – the commissioned sea officers, the pursers, the suppliers and the contractors. Here they often displayed the sort of pig-headed righteousness that tends to infect all bureaucrats. They were more concerned to get their forms filled in correctly than to allow a little leeway to the form-fillers; they certainly did not see it as any part of their job to be kind to pursers.
Feeding Nelson's Navy Page 21
