The following... is from the history of the USS Constitution.
It comes by way of the National Park Service, as printed in
"Oceanographic Ships, Fore and Aft", a periodical from the oceanographer
of the US Navy.
On 23 August 1779, the USS Constitution set sail from Boston, loaded
with 475 officers and men, 48,600 gallons of water, 74,000 cannon shot,
11,500 pounds of black powder and 79,400 gallons of rum.
Her mission: to destroy and harass English shipping.
On 6 October, she made Jamaica, took on 826 pounds of flour and 68,300
gallons of rum.
Three weeks later, Constitution reached the Azores, where she
provisioned with 550 pounds of beef and 2,300 gallons of Portuguese
wine.
On 18 November, she set sail for England where her crew captured and
scuttled 12 English merchant vessels and took aboard their rum.
By this time, Constitution had run out of shot. Nevertheless, she made
her way unarmed up the Firth of Clyde for a night raid. Here, her
landing party captured a whiskey distillery, transferred 13,000 gallons
aboard and headed for home.
On 20 February 1780, the Constitution arrived in Boston with no cannon
shot, no food, no powder, no rum and no whiskey.
She did, however, still carry her crew of 475 officers and men and
18,600 gallons of water.
The math is quite enlightening:
Length of cruise: 181 days.
Booze consumption: 1.26 gallons per man per day (this does NOT include
the unknown quantify of rum captured from the 12 English merchant
vessels in November).
Naval historians say that the re-enlistment rate from this cruise was
92%.
Tom
(yes,yes, yes, I know. "This has no place on this list, it's not an
aircraft carrier")
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Sep 02 2000 - 09:32:24 PDT