Welcome to 18th century cooking I'm your host Jon
Townsend and today we're talking about the sailor's favorite drink,
grog. Thanks for coming along with us as we savor the flavors and the aromas of the 18th century.
the major component the important part of grog is rum and rum was so very important to North America
in the 18th century it's a very vital important item that's being traded with the West Indies all
up and down the east coast of North America at the time and it's not just important as a trade
item but it's important as part of the rations and provisions of sailors of regular soldiers
and regular workers alike so it's something that everyone in North America is experiencing, using,
and making money off, of trading it back and forth. It's so very important to the war effort
that in early 1776 Admiral Graves is sending out ships to go down to the West Indies to pick
up rum because they're out of rum it's vitally important to the fleet at that time. So he sends
out a special ship to go he actually has them tear out parts of the ship and and get more kegs
so they can fill the ship up with rum and bring it back because they are desperately in need of
rum for their sailors for their Navy it's the only way that people are gonna work. Shipbuilding was
going on at during a Revolutionary War and the shipbuilders were paid not only in just regular
money but in rum during the day each and every builder got his share of rum just like he was
a sailor or a soldier so we find that they need to have this rum for everyone to be happy with
their work and and there are multiple references to that idea of you know it's their one solace in
life it's the only reason they have to keep going. Colonel Ethan Allen in captivity at
one point he said the conditions were terrible but they still had their provisions their salt
provisions or salt beef their salt pork and they had their rum and he thought that the rum was one
of the only reasons why so many people survived in that your situation so they not only thought
about it as something that was a solace in life but as something that was medicinal rum was part
of what what was keeping them healthy at least that's what he thought. The other main component
of grog is water and water in the 18th century was a tricky thing wasn't it you never were quite
sure about whether if your water was you know safe whether it was good it was on board ship
you had to go and collect all this water you put it in kegs you stored it in the hold of your ship
and it wasn't very long at all two or three weeks a month later and the water that you put in your
kegs is going bad it's it's getting green it's doing all kinds of you know microbes are growing
in it so you the water goes bad very rapidly on board ship and even if you are not on board ship
you know surface water can be a questionable item. So we find out that grog making your water in your
rum into grog is very helpful because it sort of you know sterilizes your water and in every
reference to a ship's log you'll find the ships as soon as they come into any kind of a port probably
the very first thing they're thinking about it they have to leave soon is getting fresh wood
and getting fresh water you have to have water for your men and your water is constantly going bad.
So where does grog come from? Well in the 17th century the British Navy started to use rum in
lieu of beer if you were in home waters the sailors would have a beer ration each and
every day but they also had these substitutes if you weren't in home waters you would have
other items available and rum started to become a an obvious and consistent substitute but the
problem was was that the sailors would hold back their rum ration for two or three days straight
maybe longer and then they would drink it all at once and they would become intoxicated and
that was very dangerous onboard ship you had work to do very dangerous work hard work to
do and a fuddled mind was not helpful at all. So Admiral Vernon in the 1740s he decided he
would come up with a way that would make that harder for them to do and maybe make that rum
a little less intoxicating and he made sure to have their rum mixed with water in a four
to one ratio made it harder to store back for any period of time and hopefully he thought it
would make them less intoxicated if they drank it in its diluted form now this term it turns
into this term of grog and it turns into not just a naval drink but a drink that other people would
drink also you'll so you'll find multiple references to this idea of grog from about
1750 on and Admiral Vernon's nickname was old grog because of items he would wear a grogram
cloth and so that's where this grog term comes from at least most people think and grog keeps
living on it stays a part of the the ration of sailors in the British Navy up until the 1970s
and it's part of the rations in the American Navy until about the Civil War or so. So not only is it
right there happening in the Revolutionary War but it stays on for a hundred years later. So
to mix these properly together you really need a gill cup so the standard ration for almost every
reference that you see is half a pint per man per day and this was usually divided into two
pieces so we need a quarter of a pint or a half a cup that's where the gill cup comes into that
is half a cup as a half a cup measurement and we we created this this mixture here probably
probably a little stiffer than the standard ration here and I'm gonna go ahead and add a little bit
of lime to mine and now we have our our cup of grog our standard and I you can imagine you know
you'd have this twice a day this full cup full and it's um actually quite a tasty little drink it's
so simple it's just water and rum and then just that hair of citrus in there it's a medicinal
obviously with all that wonderful citrus in there and it's a very very powerful way to drink this
and you'll find just any number of references in the eighteenth century to not only sailors but
regular landsman alike drinking a grog drink. Now many times you'll see people using a drink
like this as as a way of convincing people oh come in and have a have a cup of grog with me
and then of course those you'll find those in the court records something bad happened usually right
after that but grog was I mean so pervasive in the 18th century every man of war every merchant ship
this was something that was commonly happening with all the hands on board it is you know the
way that men are is one of the ways that they were kept happy at a job that was impossibly
difficult and deadly at times quite often. For more on naval rations check this video out.