I worked on a commercial fishing boat in the Florida Keys - the captain would give us all grog after working really hard. If he put ice in your grog, you knew he was exceptionally happy with your work efforts - if you got 2 cups of grog, captain was proud of you and you'd most likely be able to take a nap/rest for a while too as a reward... I worked my way up to being the 1st Mate, and to this day I miss sailing at night, when the crew was quiet because they were busy getting everything ready, and the captain would have me at the helm while he checked the fishing reports and charted and logged... On moonless nights it felt like we were floating in space because of all the stars reflected in the calm water, everywhere you looked. I always liked to feel in the wheel the vibration of the engines, and loved the sound of the water churned up behind us, which made a gentle 'woosh', very rhythmically, or the lapping of the waves against the bow as we ran... But of course getting back from the trip it was nice to eat good quality food - instead of like once when I went to take a bite out of my piece of pizza and a wave broke over us, drenching the pizza, which then tasted like brine with a hint of fish! Anyway, here on my desk I have 3 bottles of various rums - I love the stuff, and drink a little each day in the evening, and it reminds me of being at sea.
I served in the US Navy for four years. The duty station I loved working on was on the bridge at night. When I wasn't busy with the radar, I was an Operations Specialist, I'd love looking at the night sky. Being in the middle of the Atlantic was an experience. The whole of the Milky Way, the stars. I don't miss the military much but I miss those nights.
As a sailor, I find this video not only so full of information, but it`s kind of emotional too :) At the point where you are tired to the brink of exhaustion of everyday work, and also your ears are ringing from the constant rolling and pitching, when you can barely decide on eating rather than going straight to the hammock.... such a simple dish could be a bliss. Cheers, good sir, for you are a spirited soul indeed :) ! God bless!
I feel that comment should be in the millions Jon is passionate to a t at his craft its pure brain food looking back into the past and I feel close ..makes you wonder if people lost power fuel phones hmm people would be screwed.. Mr Townsend keep up the good work 💯
I'm a sailor from Liverpool and us folk from Liverpool are known as scousers, we think this comes from the rich maritime history we have, especially with Scandinavian sailors bringing their lobskaus(?) over! It's still a very popular dish here, we just call it scouse though 😅
Another one of the very rare videos where nutmeg is not mentioned even a single time. Truly, the sailors had the roughest time of all without heaven's spice.
Many of the older videos 10+ years ago, he doesn’t talk about nutmeg. I want to say that it’s about 6-7 years ago that he starts obsessing with nutmeg.
@@keithtorgersen9664 I was just being silly. We love Townsends, I certainly do for keeping history alive. He adds spice and nutmeg to history keeping it fun and flavorful even into this day and age! One day we may find ourselves on another planet and might have to make do with meals just like these. History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes!
It's astounding how much flavour and nutrition you can get out of very inexpensive ingredients. A medium cabbage, a small onion, a few oz of butter and 2L of $1 no-name brand chicken stock (plus pepper, garlic salt and rice if you want) gives you a giant pot of tasty soup that can easily feed you for 2 days for less then you pay for a small lunch at even McDonald's today.
@@Twinsidedsoldier You will be amazed at just how tasty and filling it turns out to be. Brown the chopped onions in the butter for 7-8mins before you add the stock and cabbage. Don't forget lots of black pepper and some garlic salt, but don't salt it too much, it really dosen't need it. You can also use salt-reduced stock, it's often on sale even cheaper then the already cheap stock. Also sub 1l of chicken stock for 1l of veggie stock, both versions are fantastic. I cook it for about an hour and a half to two hours get the cabbage nice and soft, but you do your own preference, and add the rice at the last 30 mins if you are going to add some. 1 cup is plenty. Add water as desired if you want more soup or more stew texture. Enjoy!
@@Dantprime Thank you for saying so! I know that many MANY people have come up with cabbage and onion soups but this is my personal variation that I challenged myself to make the most delicious veggie soup for the least money, and I am really proud of it. Browning the onions in butter at the start is really the key to taking it to the next level above other basic soups and will make your home smell like Heaven as well. I really hope you like it. Enjoy!
Master and Commander the film has some of the greatest scenes, the use of music (especially Yo Yo Ma) mixed with silence and action is truly breathtaking.
Making these feasts “for the sailor”, or the one that sticks out in my mind, feast for the poor family is very touching. You bring these persons back to life in a way that leaves me with such a clear perspective of how hard they had it. You adding the little specialties, like the butter to the peas pudding, or the small beer to the end of the poor families meal make me want to appreciate what I have now and make an effort to continue to appreciate the small things when We have less. Thank you for the care and thoughtfulness you all put into these.
Hi Townsend, my Dutch grandmother regularly cooked what she called 'Labskous' a couple times a year. So this could be a crossover between English and Dutch sailor culture. The word definitely sounds more Dutch than English
Hey, a Dutchie here, Labskous isn’t a Dutch dish, but a German one. Of course there is a lot of cultural and culinary exchange between our nations, and my own grandmother also used to make some traditional German dishes for me when I was young! Labskous is from Hamburg, a German city in the northwest of the country, which has a rich nautical history and used to trade with Dutch cities a lot through the ‘Hanzesteden’, cities that were linked through the ‘Hanze’ a trading guilt of the north and Baltic Sea.
Interesting to hear the word Lobscouse in an English context. In my hometown (Hamburg, Germany) we eat Labskaus, which I would describe as pimped mashed potatoes: Corned Beef, potatoes, beet mashed to a paste with pickles and soused herring on the side and a fried egg on top. Sort of the thing people want to eat when they visit
Yeah though today theres 2 basic types Brown (or red) and white. Both basically use the potatoes as thickeners but the Hamburg style uses mashed potatoes while white uses diced that's are cooked to where they're just falling apart.
John, you guys over there never fail to meet my expectations. This was a fantastic episode, it's always the common man that makes the world go round and it is so good to learn more about the often mundane lives that they led. Thank you so much for what you do.
Growing up in MI, the maritime history is extraordinary. Every vacation, my husband and I are happy to spend our time along Lake MI, usually camping. Never tire of the small towns along the shore, and visiting the museums.
I can't remember if you have these books in your store, but 'Lobscouse and Spotted Dog' by Anne Chotzinoff Grossman is a book that recreates the recipes found in the Aubrey/Maturin novels and 'Feeding Nelson's Navy' by James Macdonald which covers the intricacies of victualling Men of War during the period are a good place for anybody looking to study or actually cook the foodstuffs of the era.
And I found that plum duff (aka spotted dog) really is a great treat. Just don't tell your guests that they're eating a spotted dog (or a boiled baby) made with REAL chopped beef fat for the shortening. What they don't know won't hurt 'em!
I was also amazed at the fortitude of those men when I read Two Years Before the Mast. And I respect very much that Dana spent part of the rest of his career as an attorney fighting for the rights of sailors.
Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot 9 days old. Some like it hot, Some like it cold, some like it in the pot 9 days old! 😂. Now I know what I was jumping rope to!
This guy seems super content with his life and I'm all for it. Good vibes to you, man, and thanks for the entertaining and educational content. Super cool :)
It would be fair to say that I did not have to choose the lesser of two weevils in deciding to watch this episode of Townsends!😉 These episodes showing a menu with a main theme are great - Pulling(s) together a set of dishes you could use for the family to mix a bit of history in. Cheers, Andy!
Thanks to the Tasting History channel I can no longer hear the word "hardtack" without expecting it to be followed by the "clack - clack" of inedible biscuits being knocked together. Thank you for including that auditory example of "more rock than bread".
I love these “An X’s feast” videos- they show a real combination of the hard daily life of the period, and how those hard daily resources can still be combined to make something special
Sincerely thank you for what you do and for sharing it with us all, I’ve found a new comfort in your channel, whenever I get a lingering or unshakable uneasy feeling I now know I have something to put on that I can thoroughly enjoy while also being calmed down and comforted by it, I really love the cozy and peaceful atmosphere in all of your videos
Splendid. Mister Pullings, an extra ration of grog for this man. I've been waiting years for you to make plum duff and these other fantastic foods I've read about for so long.
I worked for the Australian Navy for years and they eat well now, I only worked on the ships when they docked or on base and some of the bases had really good food, I would eat breakfast and lunch on base, full English breakfast at about 6am and many diff lunch options. I used to go to a lot of military events and we would eat like old soliders and sailors did so I've had these dishes, not half bad but you don't wanna be eating it everyday. I forget the name of the dish they made out of just crushing and boiling the hardtack, it wasn't pleasant. Thanks for the memories Jon.
About 15 years ago, I was part of a group that did comedy/living history at various fairs. One of our bits was to make lobskouse (using beef we'd dried ourselves and homemade ship's biscuit) in front of the audience.
I'm from Bremen northern germany. We also have a dish called "labskaus" but it's a little bit different. It's stampt potatoes and much less water and cucumber.
I always find it interesting when people talk about sailing and merchant ships and such, and ignore the great lakes. Ships built at Fort Frontenac (now kingston ontario), during the late 1600's faced brutal storms on the great lakes as they ran commerce between cites and towns
My 4x great grandfather Jesse Ross was a seaman out of New London CT he was born in 1787 and was a seaman as early as 16 years old. Not sure yet if he was on merchant ships or walling ships, but he died in New York City in 1848 from Typhus fever no doubt contracted on the ship. He was also in the Montville CT militia during the war of 1812. His father of the same name was a soldier in the revolutionary war.
This was lovely. I'm a Navy Vet and separated in 2010. Not too different than how it went for us. Though the food was better, the longer out to sea we were the lower the quality of meals. So, basically, a week of good meals, and months of meh meals unless we were replenished with "Stores onboarding". Good times.
dude I was on a frigate and got out in 2009, food quality was never an issue. I mention being on a frigate because it's one of the smallest ships in the Navy. Anything larger than a frigate got better food. The food onboard was just fine, there were no months of "meh meals" lol. I know you're playing it up, but be real man, the food wasn't bad.
I recently got out. I was on an LSD and the food was decent most of the time. A few times that we couldn’t replenish regularly the food got pretty bad pretty quickly, particularly in the arctic circle. I ate a ton of canned squash, rice, and freezer burned salmon for many meals in a row. Even then our food was decent compared to other ships in our battle group. The marines that had swapped ships would talk about food on the other ships like it was poison.
I am not a history buff. In fact, my knowledge of history is terrible but I’m learning it thru you and I’ve made one of your dishes - modified a bit. Love this channel.
In the north west on England, Liverpool specifically, the local dish is "Scouse", almost certainly a corruption of the scandinavian Lapskaus. Scouse is made exactly the same as yours, but with carrots (at least that's how is was made in my house), and the bread was soft, and on the side. We'd always strain the liquid off as soup first, then eat the rest of the stew. Cheap, filling and hot.
My late Scottish Granny would make a 'clootie dumpling' (cloot = cloth) which is essentially the plum duff. It would include other teats like candied orange and lemon peel, dates, sugar and of course, LOT of raisins and suet. It would stick to your ribs and was especially welcome either before or after a day on the cold, wet, and bleak Scottish hills.
I crewed the US Brig Niagara tall ship (modern recreation from War of 1812) while I was in college, sailed throughout the Great Lakes, and it was incredibly difficult even with its modern amenities… thankfully, we didn’t have to resort to these dishes.
The tall ship in footage we see in the video is that of Friends Good Will, another 1812 replica. I sail on her now myself. Both of our ships where in the battle of Lake Erie!
Great episode.... You're correct. Without ordinary sailors risking their lives day in and day out, this world would look very different than it does today!
LOB Scouse...originates from Scandinavia, very probably Norway and is also known in Liverpool as the people in Liverpool are called Scousers. Scouse is a poor person's stew or sailors stew/soup, and LOB is old English which means 'to boil'. A great video...thanks for sharing.
I think I know the origin of "lobscouse", it's from Norwegian, lapskaus. It's a stew made - traditionally - with salted pork. Peas aren't that common in it anymore, and we use more root vegetables nowadays, and no ships' biscuits, but it looks very similar, and the name is too similar to be a concidence, and there was a lot of shipping between Norway and the UK, and Norway and the US. Still very popular up here.
Good Lord mushy peas for every meal, not even with chips! People were made of sterner stuff back then fr. .... Also, what is 'slush' from the ship's gallery?
Apparently the word referred to the greasy stuff that rises to the surface when you're boiling salt pork in water. It was skimmed off and stored, the fat was too valuable to waste.
Makes me wonder, though, how much choice a man of modest means would have at home. They didn't have the food choices we have today and many probably couldn't afford what was available.
@@Agamemnon2 Ahh it's the kinda bubbly scum you get sometimes when you do a pork chop in a frying pan, I see! ...I guess the sawdust and pitch just give a more smokey flavour? 😂
@@RobSchellinger That's true, maybe you'd be left to scrounge wastepiles or hunt rats, like even if you lived inland, doubt you'd be able to forage without being thrashed or threatened by a landowner, it's still the case in the English countryside even nowadays, unless you know them! 😂
Excellent video. Can't even fathom what life was like for the men & boys on board these ships..basic things we gake for granted, like sleeping, going to the bathroom and privacy, would be hard enough..now add rampant disease, minor infections, medical issues,running out of your fresh water and provisions.. NO WIND..They had to be some real rough and tough sob"s. And I totally agree..Master & Commander..can watch that movie over and over and never get sick of it.
Once you'd been clear of port for a couple of weeks disease probably wouldn't have been as big a deal. Anything would have already been passed around by that point and you were either recovered or dead. Injuries would have been pretty awful though. Lacking the advantages of modern orthopedic medicine the only way they had to treat a compound fracture (a broken bone that breaks through the skin) would have been amputation because they knew from experience that the wound would get infected and the person would die a slow and painful death. Amputations weren't painless (no anesthetics) but they were at least quick as surgeons were expected to be a able to remove a limb in under five minutes and some managed it in under three.
@@silverjohn6037 id imagine it wouldn't matter how long they were on board. Considering tuberculosis was a very prominent cause of death and popped up months after being at sea. They wouldn't even know they were breathing it in. No germ theory yet.
@@jennyprorock A fair point. My mother used to work at a sanitorium for people who had contracted tuberculosis before the cure. Even years after they'd been cured they were still suffering from the damage that disease did to their lungs.
I absolutely love pease pudding, the key is to boil the peas in the same liquid that your salted meat is cooking in so that it takes up some of the flavour. In the UK people from Liverpool are referred to as ‘Scousers’ for their predeliction for lobscouse, presumably they got this from being a maritime city and their exposure to so many sailors over the centuries.
I have never taken into consideration freezing fog turning the sails hard, nor have I ever heard that mentioned before. You are right. That would have been a seriously dangerous and difficult job that I am sure they hated.
Thank you ever so. You are extremely talented. The blessings you bring are keenly felt and are warmly received. To you Sir, I raise my cup and render a hearty welcome.
I love this. You brought it all to life and somehow made me want to try pease pudding and plum pudding again this way. Even that stew sounded appealing when you talk about it. Haha . Thank you for a wonderful look into sailing life back then 😊
Peas pudding is very similar to what we still eat as a tradition in Finland once a week, pea soup made out of dried peas and with a little ham. It is served every thursday nation wide in the military, at sea and at lots of restaurants as lunch. As dessert there is also pancakes with jam.
Wow! I didn't know that English Lobscouse is so much different from the German Labskaus. I was always told that a very important ingredient is beetroot because it helps to prevent scurvy. Hamburg Labskaus for example is potatoes, beef (modern recipes call for corned beef), onions and beetroot all mashed into a pink puree - makes it easier to eat when one already lost his teeth to scurvy. It normally served with a fried egg, pickled hering and slices of fresh beetroot and pickled cucumber.
I suggest coming to Old Blighty and visiting the Historic Naval Dockyard at Portsmouth. They have the Mary Rose museum, with all the recovered items, HMS Victory (now being rebuilt), HMS Warrior and HMS Alliance.
It's always interesting to get a glimpse of what people did for special occasions when they were still so limited in what they could get their hands on.
This is really interresting! We have a similar dish in Sweden called "Lappskojs". It´s made of potatoes, butter, heavy cream, salted meats (often reindeer), salt, pepper, allspice and nutmeg. It´s often served with sliced and boiled beetroots.
Any idea what the fuel source was for all the cooking? Seems like it would be a huge space for coal or wood? Oil? Just wondering. Thank you! love your channel.
Fire wood. It was a most common thing for sailing ships to stop for wood and water at any opportunity. In North America there were hundreds of bays, creeks and rivers where they could anchor a ship, row ashore and cut all the firewood they wanted, and get good fresh water from the stream.
I have been conditioned to see Max Miller hit a couple biscuits when the words Hard Tack are said. His expression is priceless. 😀🖖💕 I love this channel. Seeing what people ate and how hard it was to live from day to day is amazing.
Master & Commander is one of the best, if not the best naval warmovie ever produced. I only wish we couldve gotten a movie depicting the heroic deeds of Lord Cochrane on HMS Speedy as reality is sometimes more amazing than ficction.
@Townsends, as a fan of the Aubrey-Maturin series you may already be aware of this, but there is a cookbook inspired by the series called "Lobscouse and Spotted Dog: Which It's a Gastronomic Companion to the Aubrey/Maturin Novels", Has a foreword by Patrick O'Brian himself. The mother/daughter team who wrote it did a lot of period research to find authentic contemporaneous recipes, or reconstruct them from period resources as best they could, with the minimum of concessions for the modern kitchen/pantry. Really a good resource.
This channel makes me so proud to be an American. Idk why, but it does. Our colonies started with people who beat all of the odds and fought for our independence. I love the fact that this channel always reminds me of where I came from and how our country came to be. Thank you.
Got a similar dish in Norway. Lapskaus. It's a "leftover" stew made of another meal or two. Usually potato, small pieces of salted pork or some times beef and carrot. Some times with peas, though rarely. Also we use flour instead of hardtac.
Hey! I heard the name "Lobscouse". In Norway, and parts of England, they have a dish known as "Lappskaus", but it is shared by many other Scandinavian and Germanic countries (Netherlands, Germany, etc). The dishes are similar insofar as you use whatever vegetables you have at hand (most often potatoes, carrots and so forth) with some sort of meat and boil them together. There is a wide variety of traditions surrounding the dish in Norway, so it must be like that in other places as well. If you see this, carry on making these epic videos!
My mom was born in Trondheim Norway. We grew up eating "lapskaus" Pretty much the same recipe, except it was thickened by broken down potatoes instead of ships biscuit. It's prevalent all over Norway as a homey comfort food.
This is just so lovely. I am not American in any sense(Sweden Reporting in), however I do feel drawn to you guys, the entirety of it all, and on top of it all, I just feel that you have created an entirely unique, welcoming athmosphere, which is great to everyone, obviously. It is phenomenal! :D Go Townsends!
Even today fisherman I grew up with have a taste for peas pudding. I had no idea of the link to sea travel. Personally I don't like the texture. The stuff sold in supermarkets today very different than what you show here. Very great channel thank you. The very best history channel.
An ancestor of mine was Richard Bell. He was a sailor who's ship was part of the London Trading Company's fleet. He was married to a Native American woman named Sarah Young. Another ancestor, William McLain was a fisherman on the Isle of Mull, Scotland before coming to America. And fast forward to the Korean conflict, my daddy was a sailor for the U.S. Navy. Yep, sailors in my family tree.
What a great history lesson. Would you happen to have a list of the authors and names of the books of that time that you talked about? As a former Navy person myself, I'd love to read more about their life at sea. Thanks.
It's a 20 book series by Patrick O'Brien. The first book in the series is "Master and Commander", the second is Post Captain, and the third is HMS Surprise. That's as far as I got so far. They're really good and I wish they could just make a tv series out of the books, but that would be impossible. The best I could hope for would be a sequel movie to "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World". One of my favorite movies. BTW: The Far Side of the World is book ten.
LOBSCOUSE! My partner and I have this tomato tomato argument. I say "lobscouse" he says "lapskaus"! It's a Liverpool dish but seems to have come from the Scandinavian sailors - it's certainly a Norwegian staple, so I think it came from there.
One of the craziest common things they did that I heard about was an anchor turn. If they were going in or out of a harbor with a reef in the way and the wind conditions weren’t favorable, they would basically strategically drop an anchor and use the momentum of the ship and centrifugal force to slingshot around the anchor point in order to make a sharp turn around the reef. Then they’d have to quickly cut loose the anchor so you have a fixed supply of these sharp turns based on how many extra anchors you have. This was why the Roanoke colony was abandoned, the supply ship ran out of anchors and had to turn around and go home.
After college, when very poor, I lived off of green pea stew, no meat, but seasoned with butter and salt. I probably added onion and carrots sometimes. A cheap loaf of grocery store bakery bread accompanied it. Peas pudding reminds me of that.
Watching the pea pudding made me realize, we have basically that as a canned food here in Finland, to be mixed with water to make a good soup. Funnily enough, you usually add salt pork to it and eat it with hard bread. That makes me think, could this have been something they would have done back in the day as well?
