In Billy Budd, we hear the men grumbling about the bad food. Across the ages, military men the world over have complained about food (and in fact, a huge morale boost for soldiers in the field can be something as simple as a hot meal that resembles home-cooking). Duty always trumps the relaxation of a prandial repast, but how bad could it have been on Billy's Indomitable? You'd be amazed...

First of all, there was no refrigeration, and ships needed to be on station for months at a time. So fresh food was gotten in port and rapidly consumed, and the rest was preserved or kept alive on board. A man-o-war would keep live chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons, sheep, goats, and an occasional calf (all of which had to be fed and watered, and all of which werre eventually slughtered for food, except perhaps for the captain's egg-laying chicken). Melville's novel does not say, but since the Indomitable is sailing in the Narrow Seas (that is, the English Channel, as opposed to the Open Seas) when Billy is impressed, we may assume that she was short-handed but not necessarily short-supplied. So her food stock might yet have greeenstuff and some fresher food. But it could have been bad.

Food is preserved today by cannning, sterilization, pasteurization, refrigeration, and chemical preservatives. We also use traditional methods of pickling, salting, curing, smoking and drying. Louis Pasteur was not even born until 1833, so in the late 18th century of the Indomitable, only the traditional methods were an option. Because a ship is inherently a humid place, dried or smoked foods do not last as long as pickled or salted foods.

Meat (the British were, after all, all about "beef and brawn" and not "all hoppity skippety" like the French) was preserved with salt in wooden barrels. Salt beef (which was deridingly called salt horse) was common, and so much salt was used in preservation that the meat needed to be soaked in seawater for hours just to leach some of the salt out of the meat! But rotten meat was a problem, too – since quartermasters ashore were personally responsible for their stores, an unliked captain would be given barrels that were known to be bad. And to digress a moment, if a captain lost a ship, he was held personally and financially responsible (unless a court-martial absolved him). With great power comes great responsibility.

The ship's bisquit that Dansker gives to Billy was probably hard tack – flour, water, and salt – and was also known as "tooth dullers", "sheet iron" or "molar breakers" . For long voyages, hardtack was baked four times (rather than the more common two), and prepared six months before sailing. After a while, it would often be moldy or infested with weevils or maggots. Since you ate what was given (or else went hungry), sailors would simply knock out the bugs (they're loaded with protein, but am told that they taste somewhat bitter).

Then there is a lovely concoction called "portable soup". There is an excellent description of it in the book "Lobscouse and Spotted Dog", but basically it is the precursor to bullion cubes. Whatever soup stock there was was boiled until "the meat has lost its virtue", then boiled some more. Then dried and cut into flannel-like chunks. Once reconsituted, it was like "luke-warm glue, but it goes down quite well if you don't breathe". Dried peas could also be made into a soup, provided you mashed them to a powder with a marlinspike first.

The mere names of some of the dishes are enough to inspire dread: Burgoo, Skillygalee (oatmeal gruels), Figgy-Dowdy, Spotted Dog (puddings), Frumenty, Dog's Body (pease-pudding), and my favorite, Drowned Baby (a suet pudding).

Of course, the captain and officers ate a bit better. They would set in their own stores of wine and meat, but that is in part because they did not dine with the common sailors (nor even with the midshipmen unless invited). And if they ran low on food (due to bad supplies or poor preservation), it would just not serve to come for'ard 'a begging – they went hungry on short rations, same as everyone else.

The galley was an open fire or a stove. The Indomitable was made entirely of wood (probably some 5,000 trees would have been needed), so cookfires were not welcome any more than necessary. Rough weather could preclude their use entirely, so some meals (especially those before a battle, when cookfires were extinguished) were served cold. Feeding 700 men must have been difficult, but eating the food was, well... unimaginable!