Sustaining the Empire: War, the Navy and the Contractor State

The researchers needed to find out how naval victualling worked, how efficient it was, and to assess its impact both on the operational efficiency of the navy, and how much it affected the British economy. In particular, it has examined the work of the private producers, manufacturers, agents and merchants who were contracted to the government. They were involved at every level of the victualling operation, as they were in many other aspects of 18th century governance. This project complemented other current research examining the interaction of the state and the private sector, still a subject of the greatest interest in 21st century politics.

What did the sailors eat?

Naval food is often thought to have consisted entirely of ship's biscuit, salted meat and lots of alcohol. These provisions did form a large part of the 18th century sailor's diet, but were not by any means the whole of it.
The official weekly scale of provisions to be supplied is set out in the table below:

To complicate matters, various substitutes could be issued when any of the main foods were not available. For example, chick peas or lentils were issued in place of peas in the eastern Mediterranean or in India; sugar could be used instead of oatmeal, butter or cheese, and outside home waters the daily gallon of beer was replaced by a pint of wine or half a pint of spirits. The substitution of rum in the West Indies gave rise to the myth that only rum was drunk by British seamen.

When you consider that a large fleet could contain up to 30,000 men and could be on station for months at a time, the quantities of provisions involved were enormous. The list below, giving the quantities of provisions to be sent out to the Isle of Anholt at the mouth of the Baltic during March 1810, gives some idea of the scale of the task:

It was customary for fresh meat and loaf bread (rather than the hard 'biscuit' bread) to be supplied when ships were in port. Fresh vegetables were often issued as well.

Where did the food come from?

Victualling Board maintained major victualling yards at Deptford, Portsmouth and Plymouth, with smaller ones at Chatham and Dover. These were equipped with bakeries and brewhouses for the production of bread and beer. In addition, there was a slaughterhouse at Deptford Victualling Yard, and a small one at Portsmouth.

Some of the food was bought for the Victualling Board in the open market, by commission agents. Most of the rest was provided on contract from manufacturers. Contracts were made by sealed tender, and generally the lowest bid was accepted to provide a specified quantity of a particular commodity, or to provide it for a set period of time. The Victualling Board would sometimes contract with several firms at the same time to provide a proportion of the total needed, to avoid any of them having a monopoly and to encourage competition between them to keep prices down. The contracts were made both centrally, for supply to Deptford yard, from where provisions were shipped down the Thames to other stations both in Britain and overseas, and for supplies to particular bases.

There were also contractors usually with larger businesses, who held standing contracts to provide all of the provisions needed at particular stations, both in the British Isles and overseas. Thomas Pinkerton for example, held the contracts for 'sea provisions' at Hull, Leith, Falmouth and several Caribbean islands. He was eventually to over-reach himself and went bankrupt before the end of the Napoleonic War. In addition, the Agent Victualler, an employee of the Victualling Board in a major overseas base, had the freedom to make his own supply contracts.

A squadron on station therefore, obtained food from a variety of sources. Some came from the Victualling Yards in England via the local Agent Victualler; some were provided through local contracts made either by the Agent Victualler, the British Consul or the commanding officer himself; and some was purchased on the open market. All ships carried an allowance of cash known as 'necessary money', to allow captains to buy food locally whenever necessary, which although a common practice earlier in the century was by the French Revolutionary War only a last resort.

Myths and legends

The popular perception today is that sailors were fed very badly. Salted meat stayed in casks for years at a stretch, until it was either rotten, or so hard that it could be carved like wood. Bread was full of weevils, so sailors used to tap it on the table before eating it, to frighten them out. No-one ever ate fruit and vegetables, so scurvy was rife.

In fact, during the Seven Years' War, less than one percent of provisions were condemned as unfit to eat, a figure which is likely to be accurate since sea officers who made condemnations had no interest in concealing any deficiencies. Naval food of the 18th century also has to be seen in the context of its times: 200 years ago, meat was too expensive for the average labourer to eat regularly and firing too costly for many people to cook every day. The seafarer who received a hot meal daily, with meat four times a week, was eating well compared with many people ashore. Scurvy was a problem, but as the use of citrus fruits as a cure, and then as a preventative became more widespread by about 1800, so the disease declined and it became an insignificant factor in naval operations.

Food in the merchant navy of the time, however, was often extremely bad. It seems likely that some of the worst horror stories of food at sea actually originated in merchant ships, where owners sought to cut costs by buying in poor provisions and skimping on their supply. There are instances of merchant ship owners buying condemned naval provisions.

Another widely held view is that 18th century administration was slack and inefficient, with widespread corruption and high costs. Offices were regarded as personal property to be bought and sold, giving no incentive to do jobs well, and as a result accounts went unchecked, supplies failed to reach their destinations, and seamen went hungry. 

Research over the last two decades has given a rather a different view, which the project's research broadly supports. The Victualling Board were keen to keep costs down at every level of the operation and did not tolerate corruption on the part of contractors or officials. Accounts generated by ships' captains and pursers, Agents Victualler and other officials were meticulously checked, more so than earlier in the century, and evidence had to be provided to substantiate claims of prices paid for provisions overseas. This could take a long time, although large numbers of extra staff were taken on by the Victualling Board around 1809 to help clear the backlog. In general, it seems that the efficiency of the operation improved over time. However, all through the period covered, supplies usually got to where they were needed and there are very few instances of naval operations being hampered by a lack of food.

How important was victualling?

An effective victualling system was crucial if operational effectiveness was to be maintained, for sailing warships then required very large crews to enable them to sail and fight. Without sufficient provisions, these ships could not remain at sea, blockades could not be maintained, and high rates of sickness would reduce ships' efficiency as fighting machines.

There were some instances of localised shortages, but shortage of supply does not seem to have been a major problem for most units of the Royal Navy. There were occasions, such as during the capture of the Cape of Good Hope, when provisions ran short, but even here supplies arrived in time to allow ships to remain on station and the operation to proceed as planned.
The fact that the navy managed to feed its people adequately becomes all the more impressive considering some of the problems involved. The numbers of men to be fed were very large – 125,000 men in 1800, rising to over 140,000 ten years later – and as a result the quantities of provisions which had to be provided were enormous.

These provisions had to be moved over long distances, at a time when it took six weeks to reach the Mediterranean and up to six months to get to India, and when unarmed transport vessels had to be convoyed under naval escort or risk capture by hostile ships. These ships were at all times of course, vulnerable to the vagaries of the weather. Viewed in this light, it is remarkable that such a large navy was fed throughout the period with so little impact on operational effectiveness.

Operational effectiveness was particularly tested by a detailed case study of the operations of the British fleet in the Baltic between 1808 and 1812 (see below). For most of this time all the countries which surrounded the inland sea had been conquered by or were friendly with Napoleon, and thus were hostile to Britain. The project proved that the system for taking provisions across the North Sea to the Baltic victualling the fleet was remarkably efficient.

Where are the documents?

The great majority are in the Admiralty archive in The National Archives at Kew, London. They contain the Victualling Board's minutes and correspondence, and also the records of other departments of the Admiralty who were involved in victualling and letters to the Admiralty from admirals on station. There is more material generated by the Victualling Board and the correspondence of Admiral Lord Keith, whose command of the Mediterranean Squadron in 1800–02 forms one of our case studies, in the Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum.

One difficulty experienced by the research team was the low rate of survival of contractors' letters, accounts and business records. Members of the project had to go to the London Metropolitan Archives, the National Library and the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Royal Institution, Cornwall in Truro and as far as the New York Public Library. Useful material from the papers of politicians was located in the British Library, the National Archives, the Devon Record Office and the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

The research team

The project was led by Roger Knight, Professor of Naval History. He was deputy director of the National Maritime Museum until 2000, and is author of The Pursuit of Victory: the Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson (2005).

Dr Martin Wilcox was the Research Fellow. He completed his PhD in maritime history at the University of Hull, and joined Unviersity of Greenwich in May 2006.

James Davey joined the project as Research Assistant in August 2006, after completing an MSt at the University of Oxford.

The project has been advised by Professor Sarah Palmer, Director of the Greenwich Maritime Institute, by Dr Douglas Hamilton of the University of Hull and by Dr John McAleer of the National Maritime Museum.

The results

Publications

The main result of the project is a 2010 book entitled Sustaining the Fleet, 1793-1815: War, the British Navy and the Contractor State, written by Professor Knight and Dr. Wilcox
James Davey completed his PhD in September 2009. Its title is: War, Logistics and the British State: Supplying the Baltic Fleet, 1808–1812.

In addition, five articles have been published or accepted for publication, two examples of which are:
Roger Knight, 'Politics and Trust in Victualling the Navy, 1793–1815', The Mariner's Mirror, vol. 94, 2008, pp. 133–149.

James Davey, 'Within Hostile Shores: victualling the Royal Navy in European waters during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars', to appear in the International Journal of Maritime History, December 2009.

Conferences

A workshop, The Contractor State was held at the University of Greenwich in April 2007, with 25 invited attendees, and six speakers from various British universities.

In April 2009 a one day conference was also held at the University of Greenwich, entitled New Perspectives on Resources, War and Government, 1750–1815. There were ten speakers from the universities of Exeter, Dusseldorf, the London School of Economics and the Greenwich Maritime Institute. The meeting was attended by 72 delegates.

In addition, the team attended 15 conferences, reading papers at the majority of them.

Database

To view the database resulting from this project and interactive maps please see the National Maritime Museum website: http://www.nmm.ac.uk/researchers/research-areas-and-projects/sustaining-the-empire/