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!

Billy Budd is about many thing, but it has a lot to do with life on one of His Majesty's fighting ships. In this case, the Indomitable is a 74 – which means it is a ship of the line with 74 guns. When you see Billy Budd onstage, there are at times over 90 men onstage, and it feels a bit crowded. That is exactly what it was like on a 74 (even moreso!), but for comparison, consider this.

Pretend that the lobby of the Benedum Center is a ship. With a deck that size, our ship would be a Brig or perhaps a 5th or 6th rate ship (the Indomitable would have beeen a second rate ship (this is not an insult) and few ships on the sea would be larger. Nelson's flagship, the HMS Victory, was a first rate with 88 guns on three decks, although a very few ships sported as many as 100 guns. A first-rate ship would be crewed by 700 men, but the 90 men you see onstage would be a fine crew for our imaginary 6th rate.

The lobby would be the main deck, and the gallery below (where the restrooms are) would be belowdecks. Of course, that much space would be enough for two decks – the ceilings would be lower. Our ship would hold perhaps a dozen small cannons, and the masts (there would probably be two) would easily climb 100' into the air – much higher that the Lobby's ceiling. Everything is moved by human muscle, there are only simple machines (like pulleys and wedges) so a large (strong and fit) crew is needed to haul, reef, belay, and splice. It will be cramped to get 90 men in the space available, but it's much much more crowded than that!

You now have to add food, water, ropes, sails, powder and shot, galley and mess, etc., and then figure you'd be on board for over 6 months at the whim of the wind and waves (and orders that were issued from thousands of miles away with no radio), with only two toilets (basically seats of ease that drop straight into the ocean), no showers, and probably only the most very rudimentary medical facilities (a 5th rate would have only a barber, surgeons were rare and none of them washed their hands yet, since antibodies were not speculated upon until the 19th century).

Food is either fresh (so there are live chickens, ducks, sheep and goats on board) or preserved (salt horse, portable soup, and ship's biscuit – and that possibly rotting or infested with weevils), and if you want better you bring it yourself (but remember, refrigeration didn't exist either). Add to that the borborygmus, snoring, and flautus in a closed deck, sleeping between the cannons, working round the clock with equipment that can crush or maim the unwary, going aloft in all weather (which often means clinging to ropes 100' above a pitching deck) to reef and furl sails (ungainly square rigged masses of heavy canvas, sodden with salt and spray, moved with human muscle and little else). And while a thousand leagues from a friendly port, sailors had to effect repairs at sea – everything from mending sails to splicing ropes to baulking leaks to swaying up a new mast to replacing a rudder. And if things went bad, you probably drowned – there were no lifeboats, and if the cutters were successfully launched (no mean feat even in calm conditions), the captain and officers went in first. Sailors avoided learning to swim – going overboard for any reason meant you would almost certainly drown, and they figured it was better to drown quickly instead of after being exhausted.

Discipline, order, and the chain of command are essential. Cruelty exists (Claggart's character is certainly not a fabrication), but obeying an order is often a life-or-death matter, and in the closed environment a bad example (disobeying orders, violating rules) is one that will soon be followed by all – and that can mean the loss of the whole ship. So Billy's shipmates are the ones who will haul the rope that hangs him, and sew him into his hammock for burial – just as it would be they who would have bound him to a grating to be flogged, and tenderly carried him below to tend his wounds after the cat is put back in its baize bag. It is hoped by all that discipline is meted fairly to all, and whatever is done is witnessed by all. Many disciplinary actions were summary judgements, but because his was a capital offense, Billy was given a court martial (even that is a loaded term – it just means "military trial", usually a tribunal of officers presiding).

At least the English Navy was "civilised". The French were a lot worse off, and the whalers of the time lived in apalling conditions (being at sea for 2-3 years at a stretch). The Royal Navy men were relatively well fed (and pensioned when they became supernumeraries). Civilian ships often lacked discipline, order, and even the rough quality of life that Billy has (and don't even get me started on the blackbirders). In Melville's story, the Indomitable is shown to be a cruel ship, but there were worse (and far better!) ships to crew on. But what we all have to remember is that a ship is not a democracy, it is a monarchy. The captain is the king of his small floating patch of the earth, and the captain's word is law.

As a foretopman, Billy's life was a hard one, and his fate harder still. But his last words are "God Bless Captain Vere". Billy knew what was at stake.