Bittersweet by Peter Macinnis

Author:Peter Macinnis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781741766554
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2010-05-28T04:00:00+00:00

7

RUM AND

POLITICS

Approval given to Mr Waterhouse to supply King James’s ships at Jamaica with Rumm instead of Brandy, he takeing care that the good or ill effects of this proof, with respect as well to the good Husbandry thereof as to the Health and Satisfaction of our Seamen, be carefully inquired into by you and reported to us within a yeare or two (or sooner if you find it necessary for our further satisfaction in the same).

Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Navy, 3 March 1688

Throughout the ages, wherever people have looked to add some intoxicating interest to life, they have remembered or rediscovered the art of getting zing from sugar. When Captain Cook took his men to Hawaii in 1779, he described his way of treating cane juice:

Having procured a quantity of sugar-cane, and finding a strong decoction of it produced a very palatable beer, I ordered some more to be brewed for our general use. But when the cask was now broached, not one of my crew would even so much as taste it. I myself and the officers continued to make use of it whenever we could get materials for brewing it. A few hops, of which we had some on board, improved it much. It has the taste of new malt beer; and I believe no one will doubt of its being very wholesome. Yet my inconsiderate crew alleged that it was injurious to their health.

The ship had taken on four casks of rum at Rio, so maybe the men wanted none of the ‘beer’ because there was still rum left. Or maybe they thought it was just another of Cook’s cures for scurvy, like his ‘portable soup’ and ‘sour krout’. Christmas was approaching, and that was a time when Cook’s crew would normally make merry, as they did on his first voyage to the South Sea. Here is part of Joseph Banks’s journal entry of 25 December 1768, just ten years earlier, which suggests that on that voyage at least, Cook’s ship had enough liquor for all:

Christmas day; all good Christians that is to say all hands get abominably drunk so that at night there was scarce a sober man in the ship, wind thank god very moderate or the lord knows what would have become of us.

Cook’s official account was more understated: ‘Yesterday being Christmas day the People were none of the soberest.’ Neither Banks nor Cook indicates what the liquor was; rum was used on ships earlier, but it was only in 1775 that it became the standard issue liquor for sailors in Britain’s navy. Before then, a variety of alcoholic drinks were in common use, so we find Banks recording that when the crew of Endeavour ‘crossed the line’ (passed over the equator for the first time), the first-timers could accept being ducked, or ‘give up 4 days allowance of wine which was the price fixd upon’. But standard or not, rum was a common tipple for British sailors for a long time.

Distillation

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