Limes, Lemons, the British Navy, and Scurvey

Many of us are familiar with the story of the British Navy and the Navy Grog - how the daily ration of lemon, sugar, and rum had been developed partly to fight the evils of scurvey.

I just found a good article that contained new facts about limes, lemons, and scurvey ...... believe it or not, somehow the real causes for scurvey had been forgotten by the early 1900's - many British Polar Explorers of the 1900's died of scurvey. How did this happen? Here is an excerpt from the article.

The success of lemon juice was so total that much of Sicily was soon transformed into a lemon orchard for the British fleet. Scurvy continued to be a vexing problem in other navies, who were slow to adopt citrus as a cure, as well as in the Merchant Marine, but for the Royal Navy it had become a disease of the past.

By the middle of the 19th century, however, advances in technology were reducing the need for any kind of scurvy preventative. Steam power had shortened travel times considerably from the age of sail, so that it was rare for sailors other than whalers to be months at sea without fresh food. Citrus juice was a legal requirement on all British vessels by 1867, but in practical terms it was becoming superfluous.

So when the Admiralty began to replace lemon juice with an ineffective substitute in 1860, it took a long time for anyone to notice. In that year, naval authorities switched procurement from Mediterranean lemons to West Indian limes. The motives for this were mainly colonial - it was better to buy from British plantations than to continue importing lemons from Europe. Confusion in naming didn't help matters. Both "lemon" and "lime" were in use as a collective term for citrus, and though European lemons and sour limes are quite different fruits, their Latin names (citrus medica, var. limonica and citrus medica, var. acida) suggested that they were as closely related as green and red apples. Moreover, as there was a widespread belief that the antiscorbutic properties of lemons were due to their acidity, it made sense that the more acidic Caribbean limes would be even better at fighting the disease.

In this, the Navy was deceived. Tests on animals would later show that fresh lime juice has a quarter of the scurvy-fighting power of fresh lemon juice. And the lime juice being served to sailors was not fresh, but had spent long periods of time in settling tanks open to the air, and had been pumped through copper tubing. A 1918 animal experiment using representative samples of lime juice from the navy and merchant marine showed that the 'preventative' often lacked any antiscorbutic power at all.

By the 1870s, therefore, most British ships were sailing without protection against scurvy. Only speed and improved nutrition on land were preventing sailors from getting sick.

-----------< end of excerpt >--------------------------

The rest of the article is fascinating - although much of the story shifts away from the warm Tropics to the Polar regions. Explorers there - including Admiral Scott - having forgotten the cure for scurvey, were doomed to feel the wrath of the disease again.

The full article can be found here
http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm

Vern

Yet ANOTHER reason to drink tiki drinks!

To avoid scurvy!!

Arrrgh, ye scurvy dogs!
Formikahini, D.s.W.*

*Doctorate of Saucy Wenchness

I guess I better go back to adding Lemon Juice, to my Grogs.

Jeff(btd)

If you really want to "keep it real", don't forget to add brackish water. That was a fact of seafaring life to stretch out the rum rations.

On 2010-03-08 16:00, JOHN-O wrote:
If you really want to "keep it real", don't forget to add brackish water. That was a fact of seafaring life to stretch out the rum rations.

You're telling me that you guys DON'T add salt water to your Mait Tai's and Navy Grogs?!?! I guess I can throw this secret recipe away...

Simple Syrup recipe:
2 cups Salt
1 cup water

Boil till dissolved. Let cool, and bottle.:wink: