When you're starving you will eat just about anything,
and so when the crew of the infamous pirate Sir Henry Morgan was starving
they ate leather so I figured why not give it a try myself.
So thank you to Wondrium for sponsoring this video as I eat leather even though I'm not starving,
this time on Tasting History.
So the idea to do this video originally came to me from Maritime archaeologist
and historian Joel Cook over at Rogue history a PBS origin show show that uncovers the pirate history thatyou were never told,
and as they cover pirates I figure why not look at one of the most infamous pirates
in history Sir Henry Morgan.
Though most people today probably know him better as Captain Morgan, spokesman for spiced rum.
Now for most of his career Morgan was actually not a pirate but a privateer
which is just a pirate with papers. The English government officially sanctioning all of his piratical attacks on the Spanish
whenever the two kingdoms were at war with each other,
but there was a time when the two kingdoms were not at war with each other and yet Henry Morgan attacked the Spanish City of Panama
though it's also possible that he just hadn't heard that there. had been a peace treaty signed.
Oops my bad. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Regardless the endeavor involved crossing the Isthmus of Panama, it's a really hard word to say.
Ismiss. Ismus? I can't say that.
Anyway! While they were crossing it on foot they ran out of food.
No rations, no hardtack.
[Clack Clack]
And so "For days they lived on the leather of bottles and belts."
And as luck would have it one of the buccaneers on that march to Panama left us a recipe for preparing leather.
"They first took the leather, and sliced it in pieces.
Then did they beat it between two stones, and rub it, [gigity]
often dipping it in the water of the river to render its supple and tender.
Lastly, they stripped the hair and roasted or broiled it upon the fire.
And, being thus cooked, they cut it into small morsels and ate it, helping it down with frequent gulps of water..."
So this recipe, if you can call it that, comes to us from a book written by Alexandre Exquemelin
who was a surgeon who went buccaneering with Henry Morgan.
The book was published in Dutch in 1678 and shortly afterward in English under the title 'Buccaneers of America'
and today's sponsor Wondrium goes into depth about this most important work.
The course 'The Real History of Pirates' has an entire episode dedicated to the book, and Henry Morgan.
It discusses Morgan's amazing career which included privateering and piracy
which got him thrown into the Tower of London which somehow he talked himself out of not being charged with anything,
and then was knighted by King Charles II.
Then Sir Henry Morgan became lieutenant governor and then acting governor of Jamaica,
and perhaps most outrageous of all considering he had been a pirate Sir Henry Morgan sat as a judge on the Admiralty Court.
And it's not just pirate history on Wondrium. In fact it's not just history,
they have courses on science, and travel, and food. Even lessons like how to learn photography
which is going to be the course that I take next. So if you want to take that course or any of the other
wonderful courses from Wondrium you can start with a free trial right now by clicking
my link in the description. Just click there and start your free trial of Wondrium today.
Now usually here is where I would say you could even watch them wondering while you make this recipe BUT
You should NOT make this reciple.
PLEASE, DO NOT MAKE THIS RECIPE.
Let me do it and only me because one of the ingredients, actually
the only one ingredient in this recipe, leather is frankly not very safe to eat today.
Now there are many, many types of leather and there were many types of leather in the 17th century and many times today
some of which are the same some of which are very different
and so figuring out which one to eat is is not too easy
especially because we don't know exactly what they were eating, what he's describing because he's not super specific
and the word leather could be applied to multiple things including rawhide at the time,
and by his description getting the hair off and it being very, very hard it actually sounds like
it might be closer to rawhide. The later accounts of people eating leather it is definitely fully tanned leather.
Tanning being the process that turns animal hide into leather that is
going to keep and be more supple it stays fresh for a lot longer.
The thing is the tanning process today use, very often, a lot of chemicals that you do not want to want to ingest,
and even in centuries past tanning could often involve things like brains and liver and even urine,
so you know you're taking your chances when you're eating it.
Though there is a non-toxic and urine free version of leather that has been made for millennia
and is still made today and that is vegetable tanning where they use tannins from different roots and stems and bark
to actually tan the leather and make it nice and soft but
I got some that is vegetable tanned leather
but I don't know what the dye is and as soon as I started
to cook some of this I realized that the acrid smell in my house-
I don't think I should try this.
So instead I got some untanned leather hide that is kind of in this weird space between just
completely untanned and somewhat treated leather. It lasts, but it's still really hard
and it kind of comes in these laces. You can get it in sheets as well but
I got it in laces and so this is actually I think going to be closer to what Sir Henry Morgan's men were eating in Panama.
And I repeat please do not try this at home.
So first I cut up a few pieces of the leather and then soaked them in water for about a half an hour.
Then I took them out and pounded them for a good 10 minutes with a mortar and pestle,
and then I repeated this five or six times and I tested some. Some I just left to soak for like
six hours and some I would pound and then soak and pound and then soak
and just the soaking basically did nothing so the pounding is actually what is going to soften this up.
Now the book says that then they put the leather onto hot coals
and I don't have any hot coals but I do have a source of heat that I put it right on and
immediately it began to smoke and again not great. Not as bad as the as this leather
but not great so I decided that I would boil it because that's actually how it's often done in later descriptions.
It's also how Charlie Chaplin prepared a shoe in the movie 'The Gold Rush' and he ate that whole thing laces and all.
Seemed to enjoy it as well.
So I'm going to boil it for 30 minutes which gives me time to ask myself why am I doing this,
and it turns out that the author of today's recipe gives me an answer.
"Some, who were never out of their mother's kitchens, may ask how these Pirates could eat and digest these pieces of leather?
Whom I answer- he who objects to eat this stuff never knew hunger as the Buccaneers knew it
And I never have known hunger like the buccaneers knew it so all I can do is look back at their situation.
A situation so dire that they decided to luncheon on leather.
'Buccaneers of America' while somewhat sensationalized is the founding text of our knowledge of the Pirates of the Caribbean.
Not the ride, the actual pirates.
And in it Exquemelin tells us of the many great and dastardly deeds of Henry Morgan.
Henry Morgan Had become increasingly bold in his attacks on the Spanish and in 1670 he gathered 1200 men on five boats with cannons,
and 32 canoes with the goal of attacking the City of Panama which at the time was the second largest city in the Americas.
Unfortunately due to a lack of rain the rivers that they had planned to go up
that would take them almost all the way to Panama City were running dry about halfway through the trip
and so they had to get out, abandon their boats and make their way on foot.
This was something Morgan did not want to do because it meant leaving behind many of their provisions
and so within just a few days of trekking through the jungle
"The Pirates were extremely desirous to meet any Spaniards or Indians,
hoping to fill their bellies with what provisions they could take from them;
from now they were reduced almost to the very extremity of hunger."
But the wily Spanish had sent out spies to watch Morgan and so warned people as Morgan approached,
and so the villagers fled "leaving nothing behind unless it were a small number of leather bags,
all empty, and a few crumbs of bread scattered upon the ground where they had eaten.
Being angry at this misfortune, [the pirates] pulled down a few little huts which the Spanish had made,
and afterward fell to eating the lethern bags,
as being desirous to afford something to the ferment of the stomachs,
which now had grown so sharp that it did gnaw their very bowels...
Thus they made a huge banquet upon those bags of leather."
They marched on until they arrived at a place called Barbacoa which
despite its name did not afford them any barbecue but they did discover a secluded little grotto.
"In the which they found two sacks of meal, wheat, and like things, with with two great jars of wine,
and certain fruits called plantanos."
But for most of the next week it was back to the leather and whatever other edible plants they might forage.
Eventually they did come across a storehouse that had some bread and wine but
they got sick after they ate and drank so they actually thought it was poisoned.
"But the true reason was their huge want of sustenance... and the manifold sorts of trash which they had eaten upon the voyage."
And when they did finally get to the City of Panama they were quite justifiably hangry
and so instead of just the usual plundering of the city they were brutal to the inhabitants
torturing and killing most of them and eventually Morgan burned the entire city to the ground.
This was the event that turned Henry Morgan from privateer to pirate, a man outside the law.
Though when Exquemelin's book came out years later Henry Morgan actually denied many
of the worst atrocities of this period and of the entire book.
Like the claim that he'd ordered captive monks and nuns to be used as human Shields during the siege of Portobello
and he even brought a successful libel suit against the publisher in his affidavit he swore
that he had "against evil deeds, piracies and robberies the greatest abhorrence and distrust and that he always had and still has hatred...
for the kind of men called buccaneers."
Though he made no denial of eating leather and this was not the only time that
people have been reduced to eating leather to survive.
One of the oldest stories I could find came from the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
As the Romans surrounded the city for those inside the walls "Their hunger was so intolerable, that it obliged them to chew everything;
such things as the most sordid animals would not touch, and endured to eat them.
Nor did they at length abstain from girdles, and shoes; and the Very leather which belonged to their shields they pulled off and gnawed."
Tales of another leathery meal appeared in the newspapers of London in July of 1759.
'The Gentleman's Magazine' printed an "account of the sufferings of Captain Baron and his crew in the Dolphin sloop,
bound for the Canaries to New York."
Shortly after leaving the Canary Islands they ran into some horrible weather which damaged the ship and they lost their bearings and so
they were at sea for nearly six months which was a lot longer than these six weeks they had planned for.
"[The captain said] they had not had any ship provisions for upwards of three months;
that they had eaten their dog, their cat, and all their shoes and in short,
everything that was eatable on board."
It was still weeks before they would be rescued and so the men aboard the Dolphin turned to cannibalism.
"They all agreed to cast lots for their lives, which accordingly they did; the shortest lot was to die,
the next shortest to be executioner."
The man who drew the lot was a Spanish passenger, the only man on board who wasn't part of the crew,
and all those on board did as as they had planned,
but just a few weeks later "The captain saw they were casting lots a second time,
but it happened very luckily that he bethought himself of a pair of breeches that were lined with leather;
he soon found them, took out the lining, and cut off for each man's share a piece of about an inch and a half square for the day's allowance,
that, with the grass which grew upon the deck, was all the support they had for about twenty days before they were taken up."
A similar situation befell the Arctic explorer Captain John Franklin.
In 1819 he led twenty men through the Canadian Tundra from Hudson Bay to the mouth of the Copper Mine River,
and during the two-year expedition they often found themselves running out of rations before they got to their next outpost,
and so they would look to their shoes.
"After halting an hour, during which we refreshed ourselves with eating our old shoes,
and a few scraps of leather we set forward."
Some hours later they stopped again and "supped upon tripe de roche."
And while that sounds like a fancy French meal of animal tripe it was actually a type of lichen that grew on rocks,
and they lived on that for much of the next few weeks but "The tripe de roche, even where we got enough, only served to allay the pangs of hunger for a short time...
This unpalatable weed was now quite nauseous to the whole party,
and in several it produced bowel complaints. Mr. Hood was the greatest sufferer from this cause."
I have to say if I was Mr. Hood I'd be kind of annoyed at this.
We go through this harrowing experience together, over half of us die along the way,
and when you write it down for posterity you have to include stuff about my bowel movements?
Not cool dude, not cool.
But fortunately for Mr. Hood history would not dwell upon his collie wobbles but rather the leather eating.
For upon their return the Press dubbed Captain Franklin the man who ate his boots.
Though it wasn't just their footwear that they ate because they also downed at least one gun holster
and "a sorry meal of an old pair of leather trousers."
And while I didn't have any leather trousers laying about I do think it's about time for me to try these leather laces.
So after about 30 minutes of boiling I took the leather out and hoped it was edible.
And here we are some leather.
I have to say it looks pretty horrible.
It's kind of translucent. Obviously very, very soft and wiggly like a worm or
you know what it kind of reminds me actually of the jellyfish tentacles from from a couple months ago. That was really gross.
Okay I'm gonna do this.
How big of a piece- and I'm curious if I can get it off with my teeth.
If you're my dentist don't watch this.
Actually really quite soft but..
chewy.
[Chews]
[Continues chewing]
[Chews more]
[Chewing intensifies]
Okay.
I need water. They said they needed water, I need water.
Okay so the flavor is none.
There is like no flavor whatsoever. You could smell it kind of. Like it smelled like leather
while it was while it was boiling and everything but nothing.
It's just like gone. The texture like I said softer than I thought it would be but
it kind of- it's spongy but firm, and so now it's all in my teeth.
It's going to take me a long time to get it out and I just had a piece this big I don't think I could eat much more.
It's not disgusting. It's just- it's not anything that I would order at a restaurant.
So yeah do not try this. There is a reason that leather and and such things are now usually reserved for dog chew toys
and don't forget to check out the latest episode of Rogue history
where Joel talks about some other foods that pirates ate to survive at sea.
I'll have that video pop up somewhere down here along with a playlist of the other pirate foods that I've covered here on the channel,
and I will see you next time on Tasting History
as long as this leather didn't poison me. X_X