Oh gosh darn no. Lots of boiled meat. Dried Peas (which do contain some vit C, but were likely boiled to death) hard cheese.
Janet Macdonald has disproven the second myth, of inadequate amounts of spoilt food, in Feeding Nelson’s Navy . Her primary research is impressive and her prose brisk: Unlike Mostert’s effort, this is a work of serious history that is a delight to read. Macdonald points to records about the spoilage of preserved shipboard foodstuffs (rare), the health of the crews (good, especially from the end of the eighteenth century on) and the Victualling Board regulations (scrupulously fair to the ratings). By her calculation, enlisted sailors on Royal Navy ships consumed a robust average of something like 5,000 calories a day. (Macdonald 177-78) The quantity apparently was there; what about the quality?
I have a copy of her book, I recommend it.
Here’s what USN sailers ate: pdf
*the ration allowed either
a pound of pork or a pound-and-a-quarter of beef per day, *
The end of the 18th century was almost three centuries after people started circumnavigating the globe, and they had a far better handle on nutrition by then. In the 16th century daily rations were a pound of hard tack and a gallon of beer, and frankly the beer was probably more nutritious.
This shows why we shouldn’t trust Wikipedia too much. There is no cite for that statement… and it’s not true.
The Mary Rose sank in 1545 and was salvaged in 1982. Much of the ship and its contents was preserved and has been carefully studied.
“Tudor Sailors lived mostly on salted beef, salted fish and ship’s biscuits. They had meat four days a week and fish on the other three. We know the crew ate other foods like cheese and butter, but we didn’t find any on the Mary Rose.”
Besides ship’s biscuit and beer, there were large quantities of salt meat and salt fish on board, and dried peas. There were also smaller quantities fresh plums, apples, cherries and grapes - probably for the officers - but apples would have lasted fairly well for both officers and men. Vegetables would have been taken on board at the start of a voyage, and restocked whenever there was an opportunity, as well as cheese and butter.
I’m not sure a flagship that sank five miles out of port is very representative for the majority of ships that were at sea for far more extended periods of time. But alright, if Wikipedia isn’t good enough for your discerning tastes, how about the Royal Naval Museum? http://www.royalnavalmuseum.org/info_sheet_ship_biscuit.html
Note that the Mary Rose wasn’t exactly a long-distance sailing ship, so could count on re-provisioning at more reasonable intervals than a spice route caravel galleon or New World-bound galleon.
Most ships, and especially most warships with large crews, were short-distance ships. They wouldn’t expect to be a sea for more than a few weeks at a time.
However, the point is that they used whatever provisions they could get, including fresh food that would only last for a few days.
You said, “In the 16th century daily rations were a pound of hard tack and a gallon of beer.” The rations of biscuit and beer may have been handed out that rate (cite?), but they were by no means the only rations available. Salt meat and fish, and dried peas were also standard, and other food - vegetables, dairy, fruit, were provided for the crew if they could manage to get them, or could afford it.
Nice attempt to change the subject there. Considering the conversation is about scurvy, do you really think anyone but you is talking about short-distance travels? And I have now provided two sources that say exactly the same thing I said, try actually reading those before crying about cites.
I think you’re the one who’s trying hard to wriggle out of what you said.
You implied that the only crew rations in the 16th century were hard tack and beer. They were not, for either long or short voyages. Salt meat and fish and peas were already used, and whatever else they could get.
That’s the point, the “could get” was the entire problem on long sea voyages. Do you think they just popped in at the closest Safeway to resupply when they were crossing the Pacific, or what?
Not that long. Diseased meat was an enormous problem until canning took off in the early 19th century. Besides, fat goes rancid even if it’s salted, and maggots will still happily crawl in it.
A propaganda/pro-revolution movie, based only very loosely on historical facts, about a non-maritime country’s navy might not be the best source of information regarding the practices on maritime nation ships in the preceding three centuries.
Regarding the acceptance of anti-scurvy food, advocates for the addition of high vitamin C foods were in conflict with medical “experts” who argued that there were other sources for scurvy.
It’s easy for us to feel superior, and look down on the people of those times, but it wasn’t anywhere near as clear and simple as that.
There weren’t good guys who knew the solution and bad guys who were obstructing the solution. There were just lots of people who had lots of different ideas. Vitamin C wasn’t known, or which foods did or didn’t have it, or that it is lost by cooking or preserving.
Until the later 18th century, it wasn’t even clear that scurvy was a deficiency disease, or had anything to do with diet, rather than having some other other cause. Even Dr James Lind, who found that oranges or lemons would cure scurvy, didn’t think that scurvy was caused by lack of fresh foods. He had all kinds of weird and wild ideas about the cause, and he also thought that citrus fruit concentrate would work as well as fresh fruit for treating scurvy, even though we now know that the process of making the concentrate destroyed the vitamin c.
Perhaps in another century or two, they’ll be talking about us:
“Those stupid and ignorant people in the early 21st century! They didn’t even know that cancer is caused by Spodulon Q, and can be cured so easily by any method of DNA flushing. Their ‘experts’ had all these drastic ‘treatments’ that were even worse than the cancer itself. In the 1990s the great Dr Thon put forward his theory of Spodulon Q, and and all those pompous fools wouldn’t even listen to him.”
