In Moby Dick, Herman Melville included a drinks list for a whaling voyage that included “550 ankers of Geneva (gin) and 10,800 barrels of beer”.
Taking a barrel to be 9 gallons that\’s nearly 400 tonnes of beer.
The Essex (the ship that Melville used as his real life starting point for Moby Dick) weighed 238 tonnes.
Yes, I know, tonnage of a ship is not the same as tonnage of a cargo but 400 tonnes of beer on a 238 tonne ship? No, don\’t think so.
It probably referred to what used to be known as “Thames Tonnage” – which actually had no direct relation to the gross weight of the ship. It was based upon a calculation of the weight of corn sacks that could be fitted into the hull leaving room for space for accomodation, stores etc.
As a ton of sacked corn takes up much more volume than a ton of beer, it’s not totally impossible. 🙂
A whaling voyage could last up to five years, so obviously they stopped off now and then along the way.
400 tons in five years? What are the rest of you going to drink?
It’s for a whaling fleet, not a single ship:
“I found a long detailed list of the
outfits for the larders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whalemen; from
which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I transcribe the following:
400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork. 150,000 lbs. of stock
fish. 550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread. 2,800 firkins
of butter. 20,000 lbs. Texel & Leyden cheese. 144,000 lbs. cheese
(probably an inferior article). 550 ankers of Geneva. 10,800 barrels of
beer.”
A barrel is 36 gallons, a firkin is 9 gallons. So it is actually more like 1,600 tonnes.
Tim,
A propos of hee-haw, family legend has it that one of my great-great-grandfathers, a blacksmith to trade, is believed to have sailed on a sail-powered whaling ship as a harpoon maker. For more accurate info on the chandlering of such vessels, there might just be a book on Amazon about it all – a very old volume called ‘Peter the Whaler’.
As Jan Moir’s critics might say – she blows!