Sailors were more likely to get scurvy on land than sea

Telegraph

4 days ago

Sailors in the 19th century were more likely to get scurvy on land than at sea, an expert has claimed.
Blake Perkins, a culinary historian, said that a sailor's diet in the 1800s was much better than the public have been led to believe.
The scurvy that people associate with sailors historically was actually worse in Britain during the winter than it was for people on board the Royal Navy's ships.
Scurvy is a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C in the diet over a long period of time, causing bleeding gums, pain and slow-healing wounds among other nasty symptoms.
Mr Perkins told The Food Programme podcast: 'People think it was miserable, you know, that sailors were ridden with scurvy, they were whipped, they were flogged.
'Samuel Johnson [the 18th-century writer] said that being on a ship was like being in a jail, except it was safer in a jail and less unpleasant.
'But in fact, sailors, especially from, you know, the working class, less fortunate people, ate better than they could on land.
'Scurvy was much more prevalent during the winter, for example, in Britain, than it was on board Royal Navy ships during the period in question.
'You've only got muscle and wind. There's nothing else to power anything. And these warships, these wooden worlds, were the most complicated engines of the time.
'They were crazy complicated machines.
'And you needed motivated people and fit people, and people with good morale to operate them with any competence.
'Which meant well-fed people and happy people, so they would be given at least an hour and a half for the main meal of the day. And that was their time to do as they pleased.'
Fresh food on Royal Navy ships
By the time of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, nutrition and hygiene on British ships were better than those of the French and Spanish sailors.
Mr Perkins said: 'Just for example, Nelson chasing the French back and forth across the Atlantic before Trafalgar – they'd been at sea for 22 months.
'And at the time of the battle, they had something like 100 or so cases of scurvy.
'The French and Spanish ships, and especially the Spanish ones by contrast, would have hundreds of people stricken with the disease during the battle.
'So they really had figured out shipboard nutrition and hygiene to an extent nobody else had.
'And it made a big difference.'