Nelson’s Navy dull diet is revealed

Salt beef, sea biscuits and the occasional weevil; the food endured by sailors during the Napoleonic wars is seldom imagined to be appealing, but new chemical analysis of skeletal material has allowed archaeologists to find out just how dour the diet of Georgian sailors really was.

The research, led by Professor Mark Pollard from the University of Oxford, focused on bones from 80 sailors who served from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries and were buried in Royal Naval Hospital cemeteries in Plymouth and Portsmouth.

Building a picture of Nelson’s Navy

“An isotopic analysis of bone collagen from the recovered skeletons allowed us to reconstruct average dietary consumption,” said Dr Pollard. “By comparing these findings to primary documentary evidence we can build a more accurate picture of life in Nelson’s navy.”

A fit crew for war. Image: {link url="http://www.flickr.com/people/brianjmatis/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"}Brian J. Matis{/link} (Flickr, used under a {link url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"}CC BY-NC-SA 3.0{/link})

In the late 18th century the Royal Navy employed 70,000 seamen and marines. Feeding so many men was a huge logistical challenge requiring controlled diets including flour, oatmeal, suet, cheese, dried pork, beer, salted cod and ships biscuits when at sea.  In the 18th century, British Royal Navy provisioning was under the controlled by the Victualling Board , which imposed strict limitations on what foodstuffs could be included in official rations. Food on board ship had to be preserved for months, sometimes years, but preservation was expensive and often unreliable.

The team’s analysis shows that the diet of the sailors was consistent with contemporary documentary records such as manifests and captain’s logs. As well as validating the historical interpretation of sailors’ diets, this finding has implications for the amount of marine protein which can be isotopically detected in human diets.

Maintaining a fighting force

It was essential however to have an effective victualling system if operational effectiveness was to be maintained.  The Royal Navy warships required large crews to enable them to sail and fight and without sufficient provisions, these ships could not remain at sea, blockades could not be maintained, and high rates of sickness would reduce ships’ efficiency as fighting machines.

Image: {link url="http://www.flickr.com/people/brianjmatis/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"}Brian J. Matis{/link} (Flickr, used under a {link url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"}CC BY-NC-SA 3.0{/link})

The skeletons came from two sites in Portsmouth and Pymouth.  In 2007, archaeologists from Exeter Archaeology excavated the burials of 170 seamen and marines associated with the Royal Naval Hospital at the Millfields, in Plymouth.

Across the globe

The bones in Portsmouth show where the sailors had served based on cross-referencing with skeletal material from other locations around the world.  The team’s results show that even when serving in naval theatres ranging from the UK and English Channel to the West Indies or the Mediterranean, the sailors converged in dietary terms into a ‘naval average’, due to the strict consistency of diet.

The results also showed that sailors in buried in Plymouth spent more time off the American coast than those buried at Portsmouth, which is consistent with the sailing records.

Finally, the team compared the isotopic data with research on 18 individuals from the Mary Rose, a 16th century royal flagship that sank just outside Portsmouth harbour in 1545. The results revealed that the naval diet had remained almost unchanged in 200 years.

“This is one of the first studies to use this technique to examine human populations in the historic period,” concluded Pollard. “Our findings demonstrate the benefits of using forensic methods to complement documentary records.”

The team explained that the main aim of this project was to demonstrate how biological anthropology  could supplement and enrich information from this particular historical period. It also brings us closer to the individuals who sailed these turbulent seas during the highpoint of the Age of Sail.

The team’s findings are  published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology – and the full text is available to view (see below).

Source:  Wiley-Blackwell press release

More information:

Roberts, P., Weston, S., Wild, B., Boston, C., Ditchfield, P., Shortland, A. J. and Pollard, A. M. (2012), The men of Nelson’s navy: A comparative stable isotope dietary study of late 18th century and early 19th century servicemen from Royal Naval Hospital burial grounds at Plymouth and Gosport, England. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.22019

Hodgins I,Pamment-Salvatore J. 2009. Excavation of a mid-18th to early 19th century cemetery for Royal Naval and Royal Marine personnel in Plymouth. Post-Med Arch 42: 424–433.

Oxford Archaeology. 2005b. The Paddock, Royal Naval Hospital, Haslar Gosport. Unpublished archaeological evaluation report. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology.

Shortland AJ,Masters P,Harrison K,Williams A,Boston, C. 2008. Burials of eighteenth-century naval personnel: preliminary results from excavations at the Royal Hospital Haslar, Gosport (Hants). Antiquity 82.

MacDonald J., (2006), Feeding Nelson’s Navy: The True Story of Food at Sea in the Georgian Era