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Sacramento, California, United States

sailing to Oahu


Thursday, June 18, 2009

Hardtack ( ugh ! )


"Baked hard, it would keep for years as long as it was kept dry. For long voyages, hardtack was baked four times, rather than the more common two, and prepared six months before sailing."

"In 1801, Josiah Bent began a baking operation in Milton, Massachusetts selling "water crackers" or biscuits made of flour and water that would not deteriorate during long sea voyages from the port of Boston, which was also used extensively as a source of food by the "gold diggers" emigration to the gold mines of California in 1849. Since the journey took months from the starting point, pilot bread was stored in the wagon trains, as it could be kept a long time. His company later sold the original hardtack crackers used by troops during the American Civil War. The G. H. Bent Company is still located in Milton, and continues to sell these items to Civil War re-enactors and others."

"During the American Civil War, 3-inch by 3-inch hardtack was shipped out from Union and Confederate storehouses. Some of this hardtack had been stored from the 1846–8 Mexican-American War. With insect infestation common in improperly stored provisions, soldiers would breakup the hardtack and drop it into their morning coffee. This would not only soften the hardtack but the insects, mostly weevil larvae, would float to the top and the soldiers could skim off the insects and resume consumption."

Fun Food Facts:

Pirates & Seamen would tap their biscuits on the table (remember these biscuits were hard) to knock most of the weevils out before eating. If the biscuit was going to be eaten in a broth, they would emerge the sea biscuit in the liquid and wait. "Wait? Wait for what?" They would wait for the maggots to float to the top of the liquid so they could remove them before eating. Some Pirates were so tough, seeing all these maggots and weevils didn't bother them at all. They would eat the food with or without the crawling and wiggling little critters.

Hard Tack is also know as:

sea biscuit, sea bread, hard bread, pilot bread, worm castles or ships biscuits.

Kind of like the worm in a good bottle of Tequila? Do you think when you read about being shanghaied that sailing aroud the Horn would be a good thing? Knocked on the noggin, waking up before the mast! Wondering where Annabel Lee is now? Have you ever been in a storm on land so ferousious that you didn't think you would survive? Imagine being in that same storm on a vessel at sea with land close by!!!! Scary? Yea!!

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