17 july: What do pirates eat? : cool things I learnt today

marmitelover2000

I grew up captivated by The pirates of the caribbean. Whilst Captain Barbosa ate lavish spreads of fresh fruit and roasted meat, It made me think: What did a typical Pirate eat ?

The golden age of pirates was from the late 1600's to the early 1700's. At the time that the pirates of the caribbean was set, King George II was king. (Not the crazy one- that was apparently George III)

Pirates likely had 2 diets: one on the ship and one on land.

The Ship diet was definately not as glamorous for the average sailor. At the start of the voyage just after they left land, they may have had access to more perishable items such as fresh meat, cheese and vegetables.

However, this quickly ran out. ( idk about you but eating maggoty meat doesn't sound fun) They then ate Hardtack- a bready cracker thing,dried beans and salt beef and sometimes if they were lucky, butter. They drank grog which was water with rum to kill bacteria. This is after they found that the barrels of water would turn slimy.

As you can imagine the sailors were rife with vitamin deficiencies like scurvy.

Fun fact about hardtack is that it was so tough, pirates and sailors carved buttons and belt buckles from them. ( Everytime I make brownies, they come out like hardtack- baking isn't my forte)

One thing they did sometimes do was fish, so at least they can expect some fresh fish.

It's not all bad because when they docked, they were able to enjoy exotic fruits that people back on mainland couldn't dream of. They also ate exotic meats like sea turtle and tropical fish and of course had a good supply of rum which came from sugarcane.

Would you have liked to eat like a pirate?

Albus_Scope

Mmm, delicious hardtack, that'll be great for your teeth, which would explain how images of pirates tended to be a bit gummy!

Excellent information there @marmitelover2000 BUT, I feel we should make this a bit more fun. For your next deep dive, I'd love it if you looked intoooo… When were aquariums invented and what did they originally look like?

That's if you wanted to of course. 😁

KG100

I read once that the hard tack biscuits were used as plates on some ships, hot food like stew was placed on them and helped soften them ready to be eaten after the stew was.