Grantville Gazette, Volume 64

by Bjorn Hasseler

For safety, the cauldrons would have been set inside a brick fire hearth with a chimney venting to the upper deck. The lighter iron fire hearths were introduced in 1728. The separate furnace and hearth were merged into a vented stove, the Brodie stove appearing in the 1780s, and the Lamb & Nicholson stove (with integral water distillation) in 1810 (Macdonald 105). Copper cooking implements were tinned to avoid poisoning by verdigris (copper acetate) (133).

  The Brodie stove, up to six feet square and five feet high, was made primarily of wrought iron, with cast iron fire boxes and copper ventilator and hood. It was equipped with one or two ovens, one or two lidded boilers, and a range; a spit or pots on cranes (hinged arms with cutouts) could be swung over the latter. The spit was turned by a chain-and-pulley. A provision in the patent specification that you won't see in your Sears catalogue description for a modern stove is that "there are double dish'd screwed plates to mend the boilers in case of accidents by shot … ." (Brodie British Patent 1271 (1780)). The Lamb and Nicholson stove was larger and had three boilers instead of two, but lacked the open range. On these stoves, temperature was controlled by moving the pots closer to or further away from the heat source, rather than adjusting the fire. (133).

  There was no cooking when loading powder in port, or when the ship was heeling markedly because of wind or wave. (This problem could arise even on a calm sea when in the trade winds.) British captains did favor giving the crew a warm meal before a battle, and that could be done when they were confident that there was sufficient time before the ships closed to serve the food and then clear for action.

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  Food and Drink Storage

  In Nelson's navy, there were separate rooms for bread, fish and spirits (Pope 59). The bread room was starboard aft, high enough to be free of bilge water. The fish room was also aft, but mostly used as a coal store. The spirit room was aft, under the cockpit, locked and with a marine guard.

  Within these rooms, the food was kept in canvas sacks or in dry casks, but some victuallers economized on the latter. The casks might be of overly light construction, or green wood (Pope 155), or not properly bound with iron hoops (Jones 59). Such casks took a beating when the ship rolled and pitched, and some leaked or even collapsed. To keep biscuits dry and sweet, they need to be packed in airtight boxes, as was done by the Dutch in the seventeenth century, but not by the British (Macdonald 18).

  Water (or beer in our period) and salted meat would have been kept in casks, stowed deep in the hold. How did they get there? I may talk about the ship's cargo handling hardware in more detail later in this series, but for now, I note that hatches gave access to the holds, and casks could be lowered in slings connected to pulleys attached to overhanging yards or booms. And the casks would be rolled whenever possible.

  The basic British naval ration nominally weighed about 11 pounds per man per day, but Macdonald (78-9) says to allow fifteen pounds to account for the weight of brine in the meat casks and of cooking water. Ships destined for Channel service would usually get three or four months' provisions, and those in foreign service six months, and sometimes different terms were specified for different classes of provisions (58). The frigate Doris in 1821 carried 141 tons of food and drink for 240 men for four months; that works out to 11.75 pounds/day (28-day month). How is this enormous weight stowed to maintain the ship's stability?

  There are several stability considerations. First, the ship's center of gravity should be as low as possible, so you want to put the densest casks near the bottom of the hold, just above the ballast. Secondly, you want to evenly distribute the provisions between port and starboard to avoid a list, and between fore and aft to maintain the ship's trim. Third, you may want to adjust the position of the casks relative to the centerline of the ship, because that distribution of weight affects the ship's roll period and a short period is productive of seasickness.

  And then there are other considerations. The food that spoils first should be consumed first, and therefore ideally is stowed so it is the most accessible. Some foods were served only every other day.

  But you have the further problem that the provisions are consumed. So you want to stow them so that the effect on trim is small and averages out of the course of a few days.

  Still, the consumption of provisions would progressively lighten the ship. While the reduced draft was by itself desirable, a warship tended to be top-heavy (because of the positioning of the guns) and so this would mean that the center of gravity rose (which reduced stability). Hence, empty casks would be filled with seawater and thus serve as temporary ballast.

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  Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) Deficiency (Scurvy)

  In Grantville, the down-timers will discover a voluminous literature on the importance of vitamins, the natural sources of vitamins, and the effect of various cooking and food preservation methods on those vitamins.

  Scurvy was the scourge of sailors, indeed it was called mal de mer. There is a failure of collagen synthesis, leading initially to bleeding gums and loose teeth, and later to muscle pain and degeneration, fatigue, lethargy, internal hemorrhaging and consequent anemia, susceptibility to infection, and skin lesions.

  The healthy human body contains a reserve of 900-1500 mg vitamin C (the ability to store it declines with age) and uses about 30-60 mg daily (Bown 42-3).

  There were many theories as to the cause of scurvy and many attempted remedies. I survey below the known pre-RoF uses of effective agents.

  Unfortunately, their use was haphazard. A potentially effective agent might be prepared or stored in an inactivating manner, discrediting it. Or given too little, too late. Or mixed with other agents that in turn are given the lion's share of the credit. So there was no consensus in the seventeenth century as to what worked.

  France and Spain. It's been asserted that the French and Spanish had a lower rate of scurvy than the English because they ate onions (13% RDA/100g) and garlic (1%) (Goethe 7). Unfortunately, I have not been able to confirm that they were included in the standard seventeenth-century rations.

  In the winter of 1535-36, the French explorer Cartier wintered by the Iroquois village near what is now Montreal, and his men developed scurvy. The Indians successfully treated them with an extract made from a tree called annedda, and now believed to have been the spruce or hemlock. This did not lead, however, to general adoption of the evergreen extract as an antiscorbutic, even in French Canada. There was, for example, a scurvy outbreak at Three Rivers in 1634-5. Moreover, it was not a sure thing; in 1743-4 at Churchill, eleven men died of scurvy despite having drunk spruce beer (Erichsen-Brown 10-1).

  Netherlands. In 1598 the Dutch East Indies fleet took lemon juice and grew horseradish and scurvy grass (Cochlearia spp., spoonwort) on board, suffering the loss of only 15 men (whereas the 1595 fleet lost 88) (McDowell). Horseradish is 6% RDA/100g.

  Those were not the only Dutch anti-scorbutics. In 1564, shipwrecked sailors ate oranges (Goethe 15). There was also sauerkraut, a pickled fermented cabbage, with a vitamin C content of 18% RDA per 100g (Wikipedia). The Dutch navy reportedly served it as early as the sixteenth century (Bloch-Dano 47). However, another source says that sauerkraut was not supplied to Dutch ships until the end of the eighteenth century (Beekman 22). The truth probably lies somewhere in-between. Of course getting sailors not accustomed to it to eat sauerkraut may be another matter; the British adopted it two centuries later on the recommendation of Doctor Lind, but Captain Cook had to order his men to eat it (Carpenter 77).

  Britain. The English (and others) believed that beer was a scurvy preventative. The beer they had in mind was produced by fermenting malted barley or wheat, and flavoring the brew with hops. I see no reason to expect that this beer contains significant vitamin C. (Warning: in some modern beers, vitamin C is added as an antioxidant.)

  However, more effective agents were used prior to the RoF. In the late sixteenth century, both Francis Drake and Richard Hawkins sought out oranges and lemons at their tropical landfalls (Bown 74). In 16
01, James Lancaster, in the Red Dragon, led four English ships to the East Indies. Within three-and-a-half months, when they arrived at South Africa, 80 of the 480 sailors had died of scurvy. The Red Dragon picked up oranges and lemons at Madagascar, and Lancaster gave three spoonfuls of lemon juice to his sailors each morning, as long as it lasted. It has long been claimed that by this means Lancaster saved many of his men, but actually, the mortality rate on the Red Dragon was only slightly less than on other three ships (33% vs. 34, 38 and 45%). Nonetheless, Lancaster persuaded the East India Company to use lemon juice on the voyages of 1604 and 1607.

  Interestingly, Sir Hugh Platt in 1607 recommended covering it with an olive oil supernatant—this reduced the loss of activity by slow oxygenation. The idea didn't catch until about 180 years later (Baron).

  James Woodall (d. 1643), in The Surgeon's Mate (1617), promoted the use of lemons, limes, tamarinds and oranges (Reiss 130). So, too, did John Smith in An Accidence (1626) (Baron n39).

  Unfortunately, the Mayflower lost 50 out of 102 on board, mostly to scurvy, during its 56-day 1620 voyage (Baron) and by the 1630s, the East India Company had settled on tamarinds (which lack vitamin C) and oil of vitriol (sulfuric acid) as the answer to scurvy.

  Sweden. In 1628, scurvy ravaged the Swedish squadron commanded by Admiral Fleming, patrolling the Polish coast, leaving only 19 out of 115 men fit for work; he obtained 200 lemons for them. This showed that he knew the remedy even though he wasn't willing to include lemons in daily rations as a preventative.

  Asia. I was quite concerned about scurvy when writing about the Japanese Christians crossing the Pacific in 1636: Seas of Fortune. The passage to California could be expected to take about three months and they are more genetically susceptible to scurvy than Europeans (Delanghe).

  I thought a 50% loss would have been possible without anti-scorbutics, but it has been argued that the Asian habit of eating fruits and vegetables, including those with vitamin C, helps explain the relative scarcity of references to scurvy in East Asian sources (Torck 250). Foods in the Japanese diet with significant levels of vitamin C include Kabu (turnip) roots, komatsuna (mustard spinach) (slism.com), and of course certain seaweeds (fatsecret.com).

  The vitamin content of seaweed varies by species, season, water temperature and salinity, light exposure, etc. Red seaweeds (Palmaria, Porphyra) are rich in provitamin A and brown seaweeds (Undaria, Laminaria) in vitamin C (Taylor, 360ff). At least one seaweed provided, in a single cup, 15% RDA when fresh and 8% when pickled.

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  After the early seventeenth century, we enter the "dark age" of scurvy treatment, with scurvy attributed to a host of non-dietary causes, and numerous ineffectual or even hazardous treatments proposed.

  The first glimmer of light was in 1747, when James Lind conducted a comparative trial of cider, vitriol, vinegar, seawater, oranges and lemons, and a medicinal paste. The oranges and lemon treatment resulted in a complete recovery, and the cider provided some relief (Bown 96ff). But others claimed to have refutation of Lind's findings (Bown 167).

  James Cook, in his voyages, used a smorgasbord of reputed antiscorbutics, effective (rob, sauerkraut, spruce beer) and otherwise (wort of malt). Even Blane, in the 1780s, combined citrus juice and wort of malt, most likely for political reasons. It was not until 1795 that he persuaded the Admiralty to require a daily ration of lemon juice (0.75 oz/day) (174-82). (Or did he? Macdonald 160ff says that the Admiralty just sent out lemon juice to the Channel Fleet, with instructions that it be issued at the discretion of the ship's surgeon. And outbreaks of scurvy continued.)

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  If lemon juice was known to be efficacious, why did the British replace lemons with limes? The Royal Navy initially imported lemons from Spain, and later from Portugal, Malta, and Sicily. In 1869, it switched to lime juice from the West Indies. The cost was higher but the profits went to British plantation owners in Montserrat. Also, they thought that the greater acidity of the lime juice implied that it was more potent. (In fact, the potency of the West Indian lime was about a third that of lemon, Bown 212.)

  An 1864 Times expose revealed that some "lemon" juice was manufactured in England from tartaric and other acids, and essence of lemon added to give it a lemony flavor. Such juice would have been completely ineffectual. Nonetheless, after scurvy forced abandonment of the Nares Arctic expedition in 1877, the navy decided that "lemon" juice didn't prevent scurvy after all (Baron).

  In the twentieth century, there was and is still some dispute as to the relative potency of lemon and lime juice. A 1918 study asserted that fresh lime juice was only one-quarter the potency of fresh lemon juice, but that doesn't jibe with modern data as to the relative ascorbic acid content; the USDA National Nutrient Database (09152, 09160) cites 38.7 mg/100 g for raw lemon juice vs. 30 mg/100 g for lime (species/variety not stated, it could be the Mediterranean lime). Carpenter (237) says that by modern analysis, sour lime juice is 23-59 mg/100g with average of 30, and lemon juice is 31-61, with average of 45. Carpenter notes that the "fresh lime juice" of the 1918 study was two months old when given to guinea pigs, so this may be another illustration of handling pitfalls (see below).

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  NTL Vitamin C Supply. The vitamin C concentration of oranges is generally higher than for lemons and limes, but varies depending on growing conditions (Njoku).

  There are perhaps two dozen plants that are richer in vitamin C than orange, but some of these are unknown to the down-time Europeans or grow naturally only outside Europe. Northern Europe has sea buckthorn (695 mg/100 g), rose hip(426), blackcurrant (200), redcurrant (80), Brussels sprout (80), cloudberry (60) and elderberry (60). Parsley (130) and broccoli (90) are native to the Mediterranean region but might be accessible. Both loganberries (80) and garden strawberries (60) are hybrids created after RoF but might be available in Grantville gardens. (All vitamin C content from Wikipedia, and values in other sources may differ depending on handling.)

  Many people in Grantville will know that the orange (53) and lemon (53) are good sources of vitamin C, but historically, English and Dutch ships had difficulty obtaining them because they were typically grown in Spanish and Spanish-allied territories (Bown 76). I think the tangerine (30) and lime (30) would also be relatively hard to acquire. And if you were to go to that trouble, better to seek out the Acerola (1677) of the Yucatan, or the Camu Camu (2800) of Brazil. It is possible that the guava (228) and red pepper (I know that Capsicum annuum var. glabrisusculum is likely to be native; see Heilbron 10, and that species can have vitamin C content as high as 267, see Kumar 51) could be obtained in the USE's Suriname colony (NTL 1634). Red peppers can certainly be obtained in the Caribbean islands.

  Let's arbitrarily impose a limit of 20 mg vitamin C/100g and also exclude tropical and subtropical sources. If so, then below orange, we have cauliflower, kale, garlic, raspberry, spinach, cabbage, blackberry, and potato. While onions (7.4) and apples (6) do not make the cut, I mention them because of their occasional historical use (apples in form of cider).

  I have no information at this point as to the effect of drying on the potency of these materials, or on their shelf life.

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  Handling Pitfalls. Even if one identifies a vitamin C-rich food, the manner of preparation and storage can drastically affect its potency. Vitamin C is sensitive to oxidation and begins degrading immediately after harvest (Njoku). Vitamin C is water-soluble, and thus easily leached into water and inactivated by heat. Thirty minutes at 60oC reduced the vitamin C content of peppers by 64.71% (Igwemmar). Heating, followed by a month's storage, destroys the efficacy of gooseberries and spruce beer (Bown 120).

  Cabbage soup cooked in a copper pot for forty minutes loses 75% of its vitamin C; if cooked in an iron pot, only 50%. The reason is that copper catalyzes the aerobic breakdown of the vitamin. (Reiss 130). Lemon and lime juice were sometimes run through copper pipes or exposed to prolonged heat (Bown 212).

  Dried peas and beans do not contain significant vitam
in C, and dried "scurvy grass" is seriously impaired (46, 76).

  Lind created a lemon juice concentrate ("rob") by evaporating lemon juice. The evaporation process concentrated the lemon juice ten-fold but lost about half the original vitamin C. He nonetheless hoped it would stay potent for years; it didn't. After a month, it lost 87% of its activity (Bown 120). Later Lind and Trotter proposed straining the juice rather than boiling it, and then using olive oil as an air barrier (Baron). This worked.

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  Vitamin C Assay. Given these pitfalls, what will be needed is a method of determining the potency of ascorbic acid in preserved and stored food. The assay needs to be able to distinguish ascorbic acid from other food acids.

  One relatively simple procedure (whose specificity I am not sure of) is to add starch and then iodine to a set volume or weight of the food. The iodine initially reacts with the ascorbic acid, but once that's consumed, it reacts with the starch. We might find such a procedure in, for example, a book of science fair experiments. The result would be expressed as the number of drops of iodine added before the color change occurs.

  Note that until we can synthesize vitamin C, and can thus produce a reference solution with a known concentration, we will not have a means of quantifying the content.

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  Vitamin A Deficiency

  Vitamin A is found in food in the form of retinol (from animals) and various carotenes (provitamins, from plants). One of the first manifestations of vitamin A deficiency is night blindness and it can be followed by total blindness. In the sailors' traditional diet, the foods offering the most vitamin A are butter (76% RDA per 100 grams) , cheese (29%), and peas (4%). If there are chickens on board, note that eggs (16% RDA) are also respectable. Overall, the richest source of vitamin A are the liver of various animals (or their oils, notably cod liver oil). Among plant sources, dandelion greens, sweet potato, carrot, broccoli leaf, kale, spinach, pumpkin and cantaloupe score high (Wikipedia).

  Despite the presence of vitamin A in the sailor's diet, vitamin A deficiency did arise if the ship were at sea long enough. One notable instance involved the French warship La Cornelie in 1862. The first case was a topman who complained that he could no longer work at night. A few months later, other sailors experienced the problem. The French frigate L'Andromede, attempting a Pacific exploration, reported that three-quarters of the crew were impaired, and aborted the mission. Nor did the disease single out the French; there was an outbreak of night blindness on the Prussian ship Arcona in 1861, and in 1851, 44% of the men on the British brigantine Griffon had to be led about after the sun went down (Koletzko 3-8).