"Not only were they paid with money, they were given rum" imagine going to the bank today to cash your check and the clerk just gives you some Bacardi and captain morgan
@@deanthompson88 I see you're of the opinion your grog concentrate should come pre-sweetened. The navy is pretty strict about their hydrometer readings though, and would reject those rums as not fitting specification.
@@israelm4156 Idk, a half a cup of whiskey would definitely give you a pretty good buzz... even if you put 10x times as much water, that would still be strong as a bud light
It's still common in the UK to refer to a hangover or feeling slightly under the weather as "groggy". Never really connected the dots until this video, thanks for the history lesson!
Funny thing. In Brazilian Portuguese, "grogue" (pronounced almost like "grog") is used as an adjective to refer to "alcoholic-like dizziness" . It's the same word for the drink.
Sailers Punch: a Grog derivative: One of sour, Two of sweet, Three of strong, And four of weak, And spice makes panch! Where sour is lime juice, sweet is either simple syrup, or light molasses, strong is rum, weak is black tea, and spice is nutmeg. Panch (which corrupted into punch) is the East Indian word for five. Thus: One part lime juice, two parts syrup or molasses, three parts dark rum, four parts black tea, and nutmeg to taste. Sounds like a good round for The Nutmeg Tavern!
I agree that the citrus was more than 'just a squeeze'. The navy was forcing their sailors to ingest the citrus to ward of scurvy. Citrus juice would have been a set percentage of the mixture. You do not want your citrus, 'no rum for you. I always wondered why the liquor stores sold pints, quarts and 1/2 gallons, why they sold 1/5th's of hard liquor also. Mixology.
I've said this on other videos of yours, but this legitimately feels like it belongs in the late 90s/early 00s PBS weekday block, alongside Norm Abram and Julia Child. Such a pure and wholesome educational show. I love it. You not only manage to make an obscure topic incredibly interesting, you evoke a certain nostalgia, a style that is underappreciated and underrepresented right now
It's good he delved into the history. It would have been a short episode otherwise! lol. >pours water >pours rum >squeezes lime drinks. Yup. That's tasty >play outro music
It can’t be that fast, you need a second and third opinion, so repeat steps 1-4 at least a dozen times to have a statistical average and trust me, by that time this video would be funny
Me: RU-vid, show me videos of Led Zeppelin playing acoustic live. RU-vid: here is a video of a guy dressed in 1700 clothes making a Grog. Me: Subscribed
After the battle of Trafalgar , Rum was known as " Nelson's blood" in honor of Admiral Horatio Nelson killed during the battle aboard H.M.S. Victory. ( H.M.S. Victory is on public display in England.)
@@johnbockelie3899 Side note, I read in the book Sinew's of Power that the H.M.S. Victory cost over 63,000 pounds to build, which was many many fortunes worth of money!
My grandpa was in the Air Force and did joint survival training with the RCAF in Labrador. He remembers trading rabbits he'd catch (he's a serious survival baller. Could survive in any climate back in the day) with the Canadians who still got a rum ration. He's very nostalgic for Red Heart Rum, which was the kind this group was given. I finally found some! Can't wait to surprise him.
And they say the life expectancy was because of random violence, when they fail to tell you almost everyone, everywhere, in every history book, walking from point a to point b were almost always violently alcoholic and intoxicated. I think we need to ask this question more in history, how drunk was this person when they did this? Because everyone was pretty much drunk.
When the Royal Navy and Royal Marines abolished the rum ration they had mock funerals for the rum ration, My father who was in the Royal Marines Four Five commando was a pall bearer at one of the funerals for the rum ration. It was known as Black Tot Day 31st July 1970.
I was in the 101st Airborne and attended Winter Warfare School in Quebec back in 1980. They distributed rum rations to us, but it was straight rum, not grog.
@@vksasdgaming9472 I'm assuming Holidays like Christmas and Easter, but that's not the point? Traditions should not be broken. Even if it's not required due to modern technology? The long term goal of The Leftists is slowly destroy your nation's history.
@@davenolan5709 Traditions are solutions to obsolete problems. If they provide nothing they should be forgotten. Alcoholic beverages to sailors on daily basis causes more problems than solves them nowadays.
Many people will already know this but the lime was added as a source of Vitamin C, in order to prevent scurvy. Lemons were better for this but for a fair while the British struggled to get enough lemons and used limes instead. Hence the term Limeys for the British.
I had learned this came about donto pirates eating whatever they could find on any island they stopped at, and accidentally realized limes "cured" scurvy
What's interesting is how switching out lemons for limes actually led to crews being unknowingly vulnerable to scurvy, leading to a backslide in people's knowledge about how to prevent scurvy! By the mid-1800s, ocean voyages were often fast enough that people weren't as at-risk for scurvy, so when they changed from lemons to the much less effective limes in the 1860s, it wasn't really noticed that there was an issue -- until distant expeditions into the polar Arctic in the 1890s led to scurvy even WITH the lime rations. Google the article "Scott And Scurvy" for more info.
That was actually the entire point. Surprised he had no clue about this. It wasn't the rum, it was thr vit c from the lime. Rum was just a cover for the state secret of vit c.
@@app0ll0nysusNo state really knew about vitamin c, and it was only recently in the 1700s that it had become common knowledge that things like citrus fruits and saurkraut could be used to ward off scurvy. Even so they didn't fully understand it and sometimes they boiled things that were supposed to help them against scurvy, but boiling it destroys the vitamin c and so it doesn't help against scurvy anymore. But since scurvy takes a long time to develop and there are so many factors to concider it was difficult to figure out what you are doing wrong. Also they definitively thought that rum was medicinal, it goes all the way back to when they first distilled alcohol in medieval Venice, it was used as ''medicine'' and not drunk recreationally. A LOT of things were concidered medicinal troughout history in every culture, and the source was basically that some guy with authority said it and so it was passed on. In many cultures still today there are plants, spirits, animal parts, oils or whatever that are supposed to ''help with digestion'' or be ''medicinal'' whatever those things mean, but most of it is completely baseless. Modern western medicine with extensive studies and clinical trials, where drugs and treatments are tested against placeebos is a very new thing. And without it anything can be concidered a medicine if you get enough people to believe it.
I made grog with Smith & Cross Traditional Jamaican Rum and spent a few days drinking the RN ration of grog in different schedules to see how it would go. I found that dividing the grog into two servings (one around 10:00 AM and one around 5:00 PM) actually kept someone with an 18th century alcohol tolerance (read: me) from suffering any kind of debilitating drunkenness during the work day while making the day much more pleasant in general.
See, it's comments and well thought-out experiments like this that make me think the Royal Navy should never have put an end to the rum rations. Furthermore, while it only started because fresh water didn't keep very well on warships from the era of Henry VIII onwards, as time went on it eventually became a tradition for the sailors, which is probably why they had the Black Tot Day after the Royal Navy put an end to their rum rations
US Army also drinks a grog as part of custom and tradition when attending ceremonies. Although the recipe is considerably different than just rum, water, and citrus...
@@chrismcwhirter2606 my experience was very formal, big speech by the brass, (maby a Col. and Sgt Major. I dont remember Top being there. Lots of Butter and Warrants) upper enlisted with pots of coffee and all sorts of stuff. Thrown Into a big punch bowl and then karaoke, dancing, puking, individual passed out on decorative rug.... then we were blessed enough to be treated to a battalion run hated that full bird running up front. (We may have had th 39th Cos Com over. Germany 2002, perhaps stars were the reason for such a partay.)
I had a "Shipwreck Party" in college and everyone LOVED the Grog hot and with lemon. The problem was the guests couldn't taste the rum (nutmeg and lemon do a really good job of covering up the alcohol flavor) and they got more intoxicated than they intended!
That's what they all say unless they limit it by the drink. One hard drink of 4 oz is enough for most non-drinkers to get sloshed, yet you're talking college where enough people are there for their partying degree.
I had a huge advantage over other students when I was in college. I was already an experienced adult and a confirmed, well seasoned alcoholic. It was practically impossible for me to get more intoxicated than I intended. One, because I was quite familiar with my levels of intoxication and 2 because I usually intended to get really, REALLY intoxicated lol
I have found myself frequently looking for happier things to listen to/watch. It seems like most recent/modern media is very unhappy and violent. This series 100% is what I'm looking for. You've got a genuine, sweet person teaching us his passion! And he's very kind and thoughtful about it. Keep on doing the good work, Mr. Townsend!
Did a little digging and it was right around 1770s that the evaporators were appearing that could produce fresh water. It still took a century before they were standard on naval vessels.
@@FMykal lmao everyone, including children, were almost always drunk before the 20th century. Alcoholic drinks were just the safest to drink health wise.
You say that like it’s a bad thing. Look at all the great works through history made by people imbibing alcohol. Like the pyramids, aqueducts, and America up until prohibition.
I was wondering If I was the only one that noticed this, I had to go back and watch again cause I stopped listening to his words and just watched the drip. drip. drip.
And in the more rural parts, hard alcohol (whisky specifically) was used as currency since the US dollar at the time was not stable, possibly not good value depending at the time and place. Also doesn't help that before the US Constitution when the Articles of Confederation was still used, the US Federal Gov. had serious problems of funding the Continental Army and Navy since they had to ask the states for funding (by state taxes) which the states didn't do.
It's "cordiale", a type of liquer which was goven to soldiers everyday during the times of conscription. It's not anymore used by Italian army since many years and it's quite rare now because they are running out
Are you at all picturing a livestream that goes on too long for John's good, and Mrs. Townsend eventually has to come in and switch the equipment off and throw a blanket over him? Because if so, yes, I would stay up on a worknight to watch that.
For "historical accuracy" PUSSER'S RUM was the "official" rum of the Royal Navy until they discontinued the tradition in 1970. It can still be purchased commercially. It is distilled in Guyana and Trinidad.
At least that's the tale Pusser's marketing likes to tell. The original navy rum was sourced from multiple colonial states (Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad, Barbados), and then blended as a sort of symbolic statement.
@@Kamamura2 An American corporation apparently bought the rights to PUSSER'S and continue to distill the rum commercially, as per their marketing. Line from an old Western movie:"When the legend becomes fact-print the legend".
@@Frank-mm2yp Pusser's rum was originally the legitimate recipe that a company bought the rights for after Black Tot Day. They've since changed one of the islands they get the rum from, but myself and my rum expert friends haven't noticed any taste difference.
There was an episode where talked about some recipes he'd never try, such as some pickled fish. There have been a couple foods i've seen he didnt try and he admitted he didnt like coffee.
I think he test cooks a lot of these recipes before making videos about them but there are some where he's less enthusiastic about recreating them & it's obvious from his expressions.
One interesting historical fact about the importance of rum around this time is during the early settling of Australia. There is an event known as the Rum Rebellion and the Rum Corps. Because rum was seen as the most valuable commodity in the newly settled land, there were literally cartels that completely controlled access to it giving them immense political power in the fledgling colony.
While very true on that history, rum itself is a much more loose term in Australia, where it can refer to anything from a Caribbean-style rum to any sort of sugar-based moonshine to any sort of spirit (depending on what region one is). Grog also usually refers to any sort of mixed drink to any sort of spirit to any sort of alcoholic drink (again, depending on who you're talking to) 🤣🍻
His mug appears to be nickel lined, pure copper cups are a little more difficult to find because there are some vague concerns about health risks when copper comes into food or drinks with a ph below 6.0
@@omeganova4332 Mine is lined too. The outside is oxidized and very aged looking, but the interior is a shiny chrome color. So I always feel cool using it haha
An 80-something friend (RIP) who joined the Canadian Navy as a young man related that a daily ration of rum was still given out following tradition just a few decades ago. A group of sailors would put their rations in one big cup and give it to one sailor who got completely wasted and went to sleep it off somewhere. They each had a weekly turn. He said it was a good thing the Canadian Navy gave up this practice in the 70s or he would have had cirrhosis of the liver.
I honestly love grog. One of my favorite drinks at home. So simple to make and it's a good sipper. Mine is 2 shots 137 proff rum, 5 shots cold water, 2 large ice cubes for more water. A shot of lemon lime juice And a shot of concentrated green tea
@@raidenmckay2604 hey some advise. Get some rum of choice. But get a high proof like thr 137 I mentioned before. Or anything over 50%,. Now get a Mason jar. And some green tea leaves. Fill the jar like halfway with rum. Now get an assortment of fruit, I like a citrus mix, a lemon, a lime, a grapefruit, and an orange. Slice those up into thin thin slices and put them into the rum with the skins attached. Then add in 2-4 teabags of preference. I like 2 green tea and 2 oolong, and sometimes il even toss in a hibiscus herbal teabag. Add any spices you want. I'd recommend a tad bit of cinnamon, and the smallest bit of allspice and nutmeg. And maybe even a dash of vanilla extract if the rum isn't already flavored. Let this all sit in your fridge in the coldest part for like 3 days. This lets all the oils in the fruit skins be absorbed but it stays too cold for some of the more gross compounds to absorb. Strain it through a coffee filter and really really squeeze every last drop of liquid from the fruits and spices. Your rum if it was white should look close to a spiced rum now but with more of a yellow cloudy tint from all the juice. Take a taste to see if you like it or if it needs a bit more flavor or if it needs to he diluted. It's delicious at least to me. Then I just add an equal amount of ice cold water to rum and shake with ice.
The alcohol content is exactly why they mixed it with the water, to prevent disease from the nasty water. For quite a while people resorted to beer instead of water, because the water seemed to make people sick. Adding rum to the water helped keep the water potable for much longer.
I have heard it said, though, that that level of alcohol is really inadequate to sanitize anything, and that it was really the boiling that did all the work then again I've also heard a bit of citrus juice can sterilize a lot of bad water, so who even knows anything? I'm not gonna run experiments.
@@KairuHakubi No I don't blame you lol. I've read a few things that said in situations where multiple people were exposed to e. coli, those who had drunk a lot of alcohol with the meal were less likely to get sick. Though it appears you need to drink quite a lot, and it needs to be stiff. Beer and wine don't help as much.
Grogg is wildly used in the Swedish language for a spirit mixed with another drink. I never knew this word came from the british fleet, very interesting! Thanks for sharing!
𝅘𝅥𝅮 Well, it's all for me grog, me jolly jolly grog, It's all for me beer and tobacco. For I spent all me tin on the lassies drinking gin, Far across the western ocean I must wander.𝅘𝅥𝅮
It's dripping because the barrel is made of unseasoned, unsealed wood. The wood needs to be allowed to rest and conform over several years to its new shape, then be oiled and sealed on the interior with resin or tar. Otherwise it will forever leak like this one and be useless except perhaps to briefly store nuts or other large granules.
Yep- my Nan (RiP) told me stories about when she was younger, & how ‘ladies’ weren’t meant to drink beer neat at a pub, it was automatically given to women as a shandy, instead- like a mix of beer & lemonade/ lemon squash. And, unless you were ‘a certain kind of woman’- you only drank shandy or sherry in public, if it wasn’t wine with dinner. I’d be so screwed- I’m a spirits girl....
This is so funny, here in Brazil, we too have a common slang for any alcohol, but we call ig "grogue", and this slang can sometimes be used to define some one is drunk.
My dad was in the 1991 Gulf War - Sgt Major, I was 12 remember mum cleaning Shampoo bottles in the Kitchen sink then filling the bottle with Navy Rum sealing it and sending it in a package of soap etc. Somethings don't change.
@@guymorris1963 a friend shipped me Barretta 9mm steel magazines and booz when I was in Afghanistan. I was in the German army and he shipped from Germany to our base. No Paket was controlled by someone
These are awesome. The worst I ever did was get a box of flavored chocolates w/o realizing they were filled liquors. My husband said they had the best Christmas down range.
@@guymorris1963 X-Ray soldiers welfare packages? You on crack...No and even if you did how will an x-ray tell you what liquid is inside a vessel? He wasn't in prison she wasn't smuggling files in cakes FFS!
In Australia ‘grog’ is slang for alcohol, usually referring to spirits or liquor rather than wine or beer but it’s still used today, probably as we’re a convict country that was built on the stuff 🤣
@@otm646 When i lived there, "On the grog" was the popular usage. Where is Peter"? He is around Freds, they're on the grog Or Peter You look crook. Yeah, Me and Fred got on the grog last night. Grog also refers to beer as well. Mainly any western/anglo abased alcoholic drink. (Yeah, i know beer is a universal beverage.)
North-German recipe for Grog: "Rum mut, Zucker kann, Water bruuk nich". (Rum is a must, sugar is optional, water is not really necessary) But I need all of those ingredients. My Papa often mixes me a Grog when I'm having a cold. I love my Grog piping hot and sweet as sin 😅
Not my parents but my grandparents consume grog with big amounts of honey instead of sugar and with alot of lemon juice when they are cold. Paired with resting in a warm bed It is quite effective against the common cold.
@@alysonkiszewski5032 According to an obscure manuscript discovered from Tolkien's personal papers, orcs preferred to drink Smirnoff Ice, grape flavor.
My fraternity is a military fraternity, meaning we were founded at a military academy and many of our traditions were military-esque traditions. One of those was an activity we held with grog, and even though we had to stop making it alcoholic, it was one of people's favorite traditions. Super cool to learn the history behind it.
FUN FACT: in Brazilian Portugues there is this informal word, "grogue" (pronounced "grog"), which means "drunk"/"tipsy"/"dizzy" I do believe it has some connection to the English word =)
A Gentleman - I’m American, here, and we have the same just woke up but still feeling tired meaning, too. I assume it’s a term derived from 18th c. to describe the feeling of being hung over, as a sailor might feel after a night of drinking too much grog. Only now, the connotation has evolved to be more innocent to just mean still tired in the morning.
The daily rum ration in those days was staggering. Admiral Vernon's 'daily tot' helped alleviate all out drunkenness to some extent. He unwittingly improved the health of his crew due to the lime and sugar rations that was allotted with the daily tot. The lime would later be found out to help prevent scurvy that ravaged sailors at the time.
Thank you for being an escape from the daily problems of my life, you're historical information and demonstrations are second to none and everything that I could hope for in a podcast on RU-vid
This is one of my favourite Townsends episodes! It could've been just: "Today we make grog - It is one part rum, four parts water. I want to thank you for watching as we savour the flavours and the aromas... of the 18th century!" ...but you made it an 8 minute video full of interesting, relevant information. All important parts of the history of grog without sidetracking too much. You're a very good storyteller!
Wow, I always thought Grog was a euphemism for alcohol, not that it was an actual drink! Whenever pirates in kids shows would talk about drinking, they would never say beer or rum, but grog. Interesting.
As a kid my dad always gave me a half a cup of rum whenever I was feeling under the weather. Let’s just say that as I got older I got really good at pretending to be sick.
I have a memory of my maiden Great Aunt, who was born in 1883, sneaking into the liquor store to buy some bourbon to make me some cough mix of 1 part each bourbon, lemon, and honey when I had a terrible cold. (She didn't want anyone from church to see her buying liquor ) That felt like love to me. She was over 100 when she died.
@@casimirpiast6516 No, she was Episcopalian but born in a time when southern ladies didn't drink. She also had been a teacher, who taught all the early extension agents in North Carolina, so drinking would have been a career killer for a woman. Now Episcopalians are often know as Whiskeypalians because when 2 or 3 are gathered together there is usually a fifth. 😉
I have to correct you about something John Townsend which is very unusual. Particularly in the early Seventeen hundreds it would actually have been common for ships sailing out of Europe regardless of nationality to swing by Seville Spain and buy as much as they could carry of bitter Seville oranges. Limes don't catch on till almost the middle of the 1700 by which time sweet oranges have also been crossbred and are preferred on many ships particularly among Merchants. Limes get preferred by the British Navy principally because they don't go bad quite as quickly and for the fact that technically they can be dried if you really must and still thrown into the grog left to soak for a day and would still provide a decent amount of vitamin C. This preference for limes above all things is why British Sailors got called Limeys. Particularly in what would become the Southern United States sweet oranges really took off especially once they began being grown in Florida. The British knowledge of how to dry Seville oranges with cloves also proved true of sweet oranges and is a great contributor to what we now consider Christmas flavors. Especially with in mulled wine. An overabundance of oranges after all wouldn't make for very good cider. So Housewives and Farmers wives alike had to figure out how to preserve this stuff. While the tradition of making marmalade was already well rooted into the colonies that would become the United States. Dried oranges which could last for much longer were popular in New England where the winters could get rather nasty. the ability to preserve oranges much longer in their dried state was of great benefit to preventing people on land from getting scurvy from nutrient deficiency in winter.
There was also pine nettle tea. Tastes vile, but it is rich in Vitamin C and was used to treat/prevent scurvy by Native American populations long before we arrived. We also incorporated it, and quickly adopted citrus fruits the moment we could.
That's why the Rum Closet was the most secure room on the ship with the Captain having the only key, and the punishment for breaking into the Rum Closet or stealing another crewmans Grog was so severe.
You joke, but it wasn't uncommon to distribute an extra ration of rum before a battle to "settle the men's nerves" at that point you are thoroughly sozzled.
Rum was part of the so-called "triangle trade". Or at least molasses was. Hopefully they put more than just a small squeeze of lime in their grog as this was needed to prevent scurvy.
During the pandemic I have made Grog with what was left of a bottle of vodka I bought lemon and lime juice from my local dollar tree and I bought canned fruit be it pineapple, fruit cocktail, pears, or even oranges the fruit was always packed in syrup with water. So I would eat the fruit and pour the syrup and fruit juices in a bottle and refrigerated it and pour a shot of vodka, and the syrup juice mixture and than add lemon or lime juice and a little bit of tap water. The vodka could still be tasted but it made for a satisfying before bed cocktail that helped me sleep comfortably. I also will take the cinnamon sugar that I have and add some to a shot of ice cold whiskey to make my own version of the fireball whiskey sold at the liquor store. But I learned about grog during the pandemic and made my own variety and it was flavorful and medicinal at least to me and I didn’t drink up my booze too quick
@@chairmanm3ow same reason why nobody smells zombies in movies even when they are near and literally decaying. Everything smells bad and you gotta get used to it.
@@chairmanm3ow also I believe in ancient Egypt women wore globs of scented wax that would drip wax over them to cover bodily odor. And that took place way before deodorant
The Navy Grog cocktail was invented by Ernest "Donn Beach" Gant and is mainly called that because the male customers at his tiki bar didn't want to be seen ordering something called a Blushing Orchid or similar.
Pah! We all know the true recipe for Grog(TM)! A secret mixture that contains one or more of the following: - Kerosene - Propylene Glycol - Artificial Sweeteners - Sulfuric Acid - Rum - Acetone - Battery Acid - red dye#2 - SCUMM - Axle grease and/or pepperoni At least that's the recipe for Mêlée Island Grog. ;)
my high school history was a joke, really heavily political (they taught parts of history that were important to our local governments political bias) so channels like this are a godsend
@@aramislima902 I love how sometimes, Travis just goes full Grog in Campaign 1 (like when he couldn't remember the word subtraction and called it reverse math)
That was Captain Billy Bones. He had a stroke and was told "no rum for you" essentially, so when jim started to protest that Dr. Livesey had said not to drink rum, the captain cut him off with, "Docters is all swabs!" I love Treasure Island, and I'm glad others read it too.
I don't think that's correct, the dilution should ensure it could not be hoarded, because it would go bad just like regular water. The rum ration was documented to be a hot trade item, though - there was an option for the members of the Temperance movement to get a small monetary compensation (few pences) instead of the rum, but even sailors who did not drink chose the rum, because it can be traded better for other articles or used to convince someone to do stuff for you.
3:32 well not quite. Making water lightly alcoholic inhibits microbial growth, it does not sterilize it. You can't make dirty water safe by adding a bit of rum, but you can keep clean water safe for longer by doing so
Not a daily one, only for special occasions. I got one on May 4th, 2010 for the Canadian Naval Centennial at the Fleet Club in Esquimalt. Supposedly there was another for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012 but I never saw a drop of that...
