Who Did The Cooking Aboard Pirate Ships? | Pirate Food

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Aboard a pirate ship, food was vital for the morale of the men. William Dampier wrote, "for it is generally seen among privateers that nothing emboldens them sooner to mutiny than want(hunger)".

However, sea rations were seldom tasty. As a basis, it consisted of flour, sometimes prepared into a rock-hard bread called "ship's bisket", and salt meat. A Privateer named William Funnell wrote of this meat, that "The meat had been so long in salt, that when we boiled it, it commonly shrunk one half". The crew were forced to eat their meat raw, and it had the consistency of leather. As for bread, Funnel wrote that they ate raw flour scalded with hot water. Hardly a pleasant meal. Not only were these raw provisions disgusting, but the crewmen had to spend time cooking it. Eating it also took time: rock-hard bisket and leathery beef is not so easy to digest, and only a recipe for constipation. Enter the ship's cook. He could save the crew a lot of time by cooking food for them, meaning that they got more time to sail the ship efficiently, plunder, or just do silly fun things, such as fencing with wooden swords or playing music. Most importantly, the cook might actually prepare the disgusting rations into something kinda tasty! Flour could be made into a pudding, salt beef could be put in a stew, and bisket was crushed into crumbs and used to thicken that stew.


Sources:
A New Voyage Around The World - William Dampier
The Buccaneer's Realm - Benerson Little
Pirates in their own words - E.T Fox
The Sea Rover's Practice - Benerson Little
A General History of the Pyrates - Charles Johnson
I used examples from more sources than these, but I didn't note them all down nor do I remember all of them. I'll try to note more sources down in the next videos in this series.

0:00 Introduction
1:22 Who Was the Ship's Cook?
4:07 The Dressing of Victuals
7:25 How Pirates Ate
9:35 What Did the Captain Eat?
11:01 Conclusion
11:32 Outro

#history #pirates #food #shipscook