Nelson & His World

Was a tobacco allowance introduced, when a small number of sailors ceased to drink?
I once talked with an 'old sailor' who said some sailors 'swapped' one for the other or vice versa?
He also said that the daily 'gill' ration of rum was of a very high quality and far exceeded anything one could buy on 'civi street' and the officers quota and quality even better!
'Black Tot' day was a sad day for many.

David.

hi David - I'm not sure when you are referring to for the introduction of a tobacco allowance but ship's musters for 1798 (Battle of the Nile time) had a column for 'Tobacco' and on the Orion certainly most of the men paid up (this is not a mathematic analysis, btw, just a quick flip down the pages by me!)

These are the headings in the muster books -






There is a fairly detailed explanation of the headings here which makes interesting reading -

http://www.barnettmaritime.co.uk/navalpaymuster.htm

and in it he says Pursers ran the accounts for ‘Tobacco’, so I'm assuming the grog was 'free' issue but the tobacco was paid for (I stand to be corrected on this and I know there are more knowledgeable members on the forum)

Cheers, MTS

ps - I've just remembered this note in the ship's log, by Captain Saumarez - written just after the Battle of the Nile -



which says 'Gave the Ships Compy 36 Gallons of Wine, as an Extra Allowance in Consequence of the Action'

three cheers for the Captain -!!!-

Given the danger of fire, you'd think smoking aboard would be restricted... was it?

Thanks for your reply `emmteeyess`
Its all interesting for sure, `reading between the lines` so to speak; it seems a lot depended on the `actual` captain of the ship.
Like you i stand to be corrected, but, in some ways the battle of Waterloo 'was' won on the playing fields of Eton.

Galiano:

I'm not sure whether smoking was allowed on board - as you say, with the hazard of fire, it would have been a risky occupation. However, I wonder if tobacco was actually smoked. I grew up in a mining village, and it was very common for miners to chew tobacco underground - matches or cigarette lighters were, of course, banned because of the risk of explosion from methane gas. They believed that chewing tobacco, and spitting out the saliva was a precaution against swallowing coal dust, with the consequent risk of the lung disease pneumoconiosis, common among miners. I think you get the nicotine 'hit' from chewing as well as smoking tobacco, so maybe sailors got their hit that way.

Snuff was also in common usage at the time. Nelson always took quantities aboard, though whether this was for personal consumption or for offering to guests is not clear.

Chewing tobacco was a habit associated with sailors. On one occasion (1803) when selecting pressed men from the receiving ship, my ancestor told his lieutenant to make sure he picked seamen by choosing those chewing tobacco. Unfortunately another captain had beaten him to it.

Fire was one of the worst disasters that could occur to a wooden ship so smoking, or indeed the use of any naked flames below decks was strictly controlled, particularly in proximity to the magazine. I believe in many cases it was a punishable offence.

For this reason, many seamen took to chewing tobacco in the form of a 'quid' and, as Tony said, it was a practice of long standing. Smoking I think was allowed, but this activity was usually relegated to the upper (weather) deck, very likely the fo'c's'le since this was the off-watch area used by the crew. As Anna mentioned, the nicotine effect would probably have been the same when chewing tobacco.

As regards the amount of snuff Nelson took to sea, I'm not sure he himself used it that much. I have, though, an idea that it was mainly for the use of any dignataries and guests, that might come aboard in ports that were visited – to help 'oil the wheels of diplomacy'.

Hello team, when a man o war was fully operational there would of been no time to smoke!
its unlikely smoking was banned in my opinion, naked flames were everywhere!
They were extremely dangerous in all ways!

As one of the 'team', I tend to disagree. There would have been ample opportunity for the, probably relatively few, in the ship's company who chose to smoke (in the designated areas of course). Similarly, other activities were engaged in when off watch – especially on long, monotonous, passages, and as far as any activities against the enemy were concerned – even when a ship was on a war footing. Ship were not constantly at battle stations, and figures show that engagements against the enemy were comparatively low down on the list, for the period most ships were at sea.

Your last two sentences would seem to contradict themselves. If the navy wasn't that bothered about naked lights below decks, why then did they go to the lengths of providing glass-enclosed light boxes in the magazines?

Btw, exclamation marks aren't really necessary (!)

Sorry Kester.
Your right of course, my apologies.

David,

Ok, no worries, as they say down under.

Chewing it, of course... *smacks own forehead*

(I was thinking smoking just then, because I'd been wondering when cigarettes came into use and there's a Goya painting dated 1777-8 in which a man appears, at least from a distance, to be smoking a cigarette)

Imagine what their teeth were like. Chewing tobacco must have been something like the, thankfully small, number of people in the habit of taking 'snus' over here in Sweden – yeugh!

Not to mention the risk of mouth cancer - a hazard of chewing tobacco.

Maybe the average seaman didn't live long enough to die of cancer. Somebody, Nelson or maybe Collingwood, remarked that the sea life aged a man extremely fast. Though whether that brought down average lifespan I don't know.