I love to read about history. Every time I read a book about the history of naval warfare or explorers on the high seas, I read about the horrors of hardtack.
There are many reasons that being a sailor during the golden age of sail was perhaps the roughest job in the world, but hardtack has nothing to do with it. Not if you’re Jewish at least.
Sailor: “The worst part of being a sailor is your ration of hardtack. It’s terrible. It’s tasteless and dry.”
Jew: “So… Matzoh.”
Sailor: “You just don’t get it, it’s made with nothing but flour, water, and salt.”
Jew: “Yeah, Matzoh.”
Sailor: “No, they don’t let it rise. They bake it hard.”
Jew: “Yeah, we call that Matzoh.”
Sailor: “No, they do it that way so that it will survive for weeks and months on a hard voyage.”
Jew: “Like when my people wandered in the desert for 40 years eating Matzoh?”
Sailor: “You don’t understand, for days on end our diet consists of water and hardtack.”
Jew: “Yeah, that’s called ‘Passover.'”
The worst part to me would not be the hardtack itself; it would be the stories of the hardtack moving because it was so full of “vermin”.
I like reading about the era of sail also, but there was nothing romantic about it. The fact that people did it more than once is always astonishing to me. I read about these things and it makes me realize we, indeed, have become a nation of wimps (me included, frankly.)
If you haven’t already read it, add “Two years before the mast” by Richard Henry Dana to your reading list. And, of course, “South” by Shackleton.
Not precisely sailing related but another amazing story of hardship is “The worst journey in the world” by Apsley Cherry-Garrard.
The vermin just added a little extra protein ?
Yeah, being a sailor was so popular that every major port in the world had a thriving industry of “Shanghaing” people to fill out crews.
@nuke road warrior, I know that “Shanghaing” did happen. Do we have any references to how common it was? I also know that there was more than a bit of accidental “Shanghaing” where a sailor had signed on, gotten some cash and was now missing (Drunk in the brothels). When collecting their crew, sometimes sailors from other crews got picked up by mistake.
Again, I just do not have the references to know how common either of those two things were. What we have are stories of it happening, but no good data on how common it is.
To put this in perspective, I enjoy watching cop shows from around the world, you can get an idea of how people perceive their law enforcement by the culture that portrays them.
Example: Cops in NYC are portrayed as hating civilians owning guns, will often enter apartments without warrants based on “Did you hear that? Somebody was calling for help! Opps, my mistake, but while we are here, what do we see”
In UK shows cops are often portrayed as entering and search dwellings without warrants, then coming back with a warrant based on what the cop saw in the non-warrant search. One I watched recently showed the cops entering a flat and walking around to see what they could see. It wasn’t a “Search” and they had to be “careful not to search”. They then came back with a warrant to search that flat because of what they learned from that “inspection.”
And if you want to just plain shake your head in disgust, watch a Russian cop show.
So when I read the stories of the time of the tall ships and they talk about “Shanghaing” or forcible conscription, or I hear it in the songs of the time, it suggests to me that “everybody knows it happens” and therefore it is perceived as common.
Think about every joke you’ve ever heard about “The Casting Couch” and realize that Hollywood has been abusing actors and actresses for many many years. Everybody knew, but we don’t have data on it.
Reading _Two Years Before The Mast_ was eye opening to me as a kid. What amazes me today is that the sailor, after spending a large part of the first half of the voyage complaining about the captain, choose to change ships and sail under the SAME captain back to the east coast.
A couple of things that I’ve learned about “hardtack” is that while the vermin are very gross when we think about it today, that vermin was protean and they ate it because it was more food than just the hardtack.
The other thing is that we think of eating crackers and bread as is. Hardtack *could* be eaten that way, but often it was used as a base in other meals. So it would be added to a broth to add bulk. As such it wasn’t the same.
If you really want to be grossed out, go read the allowed amount of foreign material that is allowed in food products. That foreign material is often bugs.
So hardtack = matzoh? Huh, learned something new today. 😀
https://youtu.be/GD6qtc2_AQA LOL!