Detail from The Scourge of India Captains Taking His Usual Regale, W. Wells, 1781, Wellcome Library. |
Sailors could lay in their own stores of alcohol. John Fray, a sailor on the Maryland merchantman Rumney & Long in 1747/8 bought twelve gallons of wine, two gallons of brandy, fifteen gallons of cider, and twelve and a half gallons of rum. All told, alcohol cost him four pounds and seventeen shillings, nearly a quarter of all his expenses for the voyage.
Maryland State Archives, SC 1065, Rumney & Long ledger book, f.14 |
The National Archives (UK), ADM 4/180, f.499 |
On long passages and on foreign stations men drank watered wine (in the proportion of 8 to 1) or watered spirits (in the proportion of 16 to 1), but in home water they drank beer alone, and the length of time a ship could stay at sea was effectively measured by how long her beer would last.[1]Beer was so important, the the ability to brew it made sailors valuable. The cooper John Nicol spent much of his time at sea as a brewer of spruce beer. At least once he was recruited into a profitable voyage for that very skill:
At once I made myself clean and waited upon Captain Portlock. He was happy to see me, as I was an excellent brewer of spruce-beer, and the very man he wished, but knew not where to have sent for me. I was at once engaged on the most liberal terms as cooper, and went away rejoicing in my good fortune.[2]Samuel Kelly related the drinks of choice for the upper and lower decks of an American vessel:
The American officers appeared sober men, as they generally drank water mixed with the bottled porter, though some of the crew had broached a pipe of Madeira wine in the between decks, and cut up the cheese which they fried in the pan to eat.[3]Mixing drinks, as we have seen, was common. Generally this was watering down, which includes the famous sailors' rum drink grog. Grog was a very simple drink, as Francis Grose defines it in the 1785 edition of his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:
Grog was certainly present on eighteenth century vessels. William Spavens, Jacob Nagle, and Samuel Kelly all write of receiving an allowance of grog.[5] Notably, many sailors don't mention grog at all.
Eighteenth century sailors were figuratively awash in liquor. Alcohol formed an important part of maritime culture. That drinking culture was host to a diverse range of drinks, and not defined solely by rum.
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[1] Rodger, N.A.M., The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy, New York: W.W. Norton, 1996, page 90-92
[2] Nicol, John, The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner, edited by Tim Flannery, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997, page 77.
[3] Kelly, Samuel, Samuel Kelly: An Eighteenth Century Seaman, Whose Days Have Been Few and Evil, edited by Crosbie Garstin, Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1925, page 49.
[4] Grose, Francis, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, London: S. Hooper, 1785, via Google Books, accessed January 26, 2018 <https://books.google.com/books?id=NqHteIy-lXYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=vulgar+dictionary&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj32PjZ0fXYAhUKyVMKHYcOB7QQ6AEILjAB#v=onepage&q&f=false>.
[5] Spavens, William, Memoirs of a Seafaring Life: The Narrative of William Spavens, edited by N.A.M. Rodger, County Somerset: The Bath Press, 2000, page 35; Nagle, Jacob, The Nagle Journal: A Diary of the Life of Jacob Nagle, Sailor, from the Year 1775 to 1841, edited by John C. Dann, New York: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1988, pages 20 and 66; Kelly, Eighteenth Century Seaman, pages 101-102.
A rum fine discourse!
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