Penny le Couteur & Jay Burreson (7 page)

In spite of all their efforts, the Dutch monopoly in the trade in nutmeg and cloves did not last. In 1770 a French diplomat smuggled clove seedlings from the Moluccas to the French colony of Mauritius. From Mauritius they spread all along the East African coast and especially to Zanzibar, where cloves quickly became the major export.

Nutmeg, on the other hand, proved notoriously difficult to cultivate outside its original home on the Banda Islands. The tree requires rich, moist, well-drained soil and hot, humid conditions away from the sun and strong winds. Despite the difficulty competitors had in establishing nutmeg growth elsewhere, the Dutch took the precaution of dipping whole nutmegs in lime (calcium hydroxide or slaked lime) before export, to prevent any possibility of sprouting. Eventually the British managed to introduce nutmeg trees into Singapore and the West Indies. The Caribbean island of Grenada became known as “the Nutmeg Isle” and is now the major producer of the spice.

 

 

The great worldwide trade in spices would doubtless have continued were it not for the advent of refrigeration. With pepper, cloves, and nutmeg no longer needed as preservatives, the huge demand for piperine, eugenol, isoeugenol, and the other fragrant molecules of these once exotic spices has gone. Today pepper and other spices still grow in India, but they are not major exports. The islands of Ternate and Tidore and the Banda group, now part of Indonesia, are more remote than ever. No longer frequented by great sailing ships seeking to load their hulls with cloves and nutmeg, these small islands slumber in the hot sun, visited only by occasional tourists who explore the crumbling old Dutch forts or dive the pristine coral reefs.

The lure of spices is in the past. We still enjoy them for the rich, warm flavor their molecules impart to our food, but we rarely think of the fortunes they built, the conflicts they provoked, and the amazing feats of exploration they inspired.

2. ASCORBIC ACID

T
HE EAGE OF DISCOVERY was fueled by molecules of the spice trade, but it was the lack of another, quite different molecule that almost ended it. Over 90 percent of his crew didn't survive Magellan's 1519-1522 circumnavigation of the world—in large part due to scurvy, a devastating disease caused by a deficiency of the ascorbic acid molecule, dietary vitamin C.

Exhaustion and weakness, swelling of the arms and legs, softening of the gums, excessive bruising, hemorrhaging from the nose and mouth, foul breath, diarrhea, muscle pain, loss of teeth, lung and kidney problems—the list of symptoms of scurvy is long and horrible. Death generally results from an acute infection such as pneumonia or some other respiratory ailment or, even in young people, from heart failure. One symptom, depression, occurs at an early stage, but whether it is an effect of the actual disease or a response to the other symptoms is not clear. After all, if you were constantly exhausted and had sores that did not heal, painful and bleeding gums, stinking breath, and diarrhea, and you knew that there was worse to come, would you not be depressed, too?

Scurvy is an ancient disease. Changes in bone structure in Neolithic remains are thought to be compatible with scurvy, and hieroglyphs from ancient Egypt have been interpreted as referring to it. The word
scurvy
is said to be derived from Norse, the language of the seafaring Viking warriors who, starting in the ninth century, raided the Atlantic coast of Europe from their northern homelands in Scandinavia. A lack of vitamin-rich fresh fruit and vegetables would have been common on board ships and in northern communities during winter. The Vikings supposedly made use of scurvy grass, a form of Arctic cress, on their way to America via Greenland. The first real descriptions of what was probably scurvy date from the Crusades in the thirteenth century.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as longer voyages were made possible by the development of more efficient sets of sails and fully rigged ships, scurvy became commonplace at sea. Oar-propelled galleys, such as those used by the Greeks and Romans, and the small sailing boats of Arab traders had stayed fairly close to the coast. These vessels were not seaworthy enough to withstand the rough waters and huge swells of the open ocean. Consequently, they would seldom venture far from the coast, and supplies could be replenished every few days or weeks. Access to fresh food on a regular basis meant that scurvy was seldom a major problem. But in the fifteenth century, long ocean voyages in large sailing ships heralded not only the Age of Discovery but also reliance on preserved food.

Bigger ships had to carry cargo and arms, a larger crew to handle the more complicated rigging and sails, and food and water for months at sea. An increase in the number of decks and men and the amount of supplies inevitably translated into cramped sleeping and living conditions for the crew, poor ventilation, and a subsequent increase in infectious diseases and respiratory conditions. Consumption (tuberculosis) and the “bloody flux” (a pernicious form of diarrhea) were common as, no doubt, were body and head lice, scabies, and other contagious skin conditions.

The standard sailor's food did nothing to improve his health. Two major factors dictated the seafaring diet. Firstly, aboard wooden ships it was extremely difficult to keep anything, including food, dry and mold free. Water was absorbed through wooden hulls, as the only waterproofing material available was pitch, a dark-colored, sticky resin obtained as a by-product of charcoal manufacture, applied to the outside of the hull. The inside of the hull, particularly where ventilation was poor, would have been extremely humid. Many accounts of sailing journeys describe incessant dampness, as mold and mildew grew on clothing, on leather boots and belts, on bedding, and on books. The standard sailor's fare was salted beef or pork and ship's biscuits known as hardtack, a mixture of flour and water without salt that was baked rock hard and used as a substitute for bread. Hardtack had the desirable characteristic of being relatively immune to mildew. It was baked to such a degree of hardness that it remained edible for decades, but it was extremely difficult to bite into, especially for those whose gums were inflamed by the onset of scurvy. Typically, ship's biscuits were weevil infested, a circumstance that was actually welcomed by sailors as the weevil holes increased porosity and made the biscuits easier to break and chew.

The second factor governing diet on wooden ships was the fear of fire. Wooden construction and liberal use of highly combustible pitch meant that constant diligence was necessary to prevent fire at sea. For this reason the only fire permitted on board was in the galley and then only in relatively calm weather. At the first sign of foul weather, galley fires would be extinguished until the storm was over. Cooking was often not possible for days at a time. Salted meat could not be simmered in water for the hours necessary to reduce its saltiness; nor could ship's biscuits be made at least somewhat palatable by dunking them in hot stew or broth.

At the outset of a voyage provisions would be taken on board: butter, cheese, vinegar, bread, dried peas, beer, and rum. The butter was soon rancid, the bread moldy, the dried peas weevil infested, the cheeses hard, and the beer sour. None of these items provided vitamin C, so signs of scurvy were often evident after as little as six weeks out of port. Was it any wonder that the navies of European countries had to resort to the press-gang as a means of manning their ships?

Scurvy's toll on the lives and health of sailors is recorded in the logs of early voyages. By the time the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama sailed around the southern tip of Africa in 1497, one hundred of his 160-member crew had died from scurvy. Reports exist of the discovery of ships adrift at sea with entire crews dead from the disease. It is estimated that for centuries scurvy was responsible for more death at sea than all other causes; more than the combined total of naval battles, piracy, shipwrecks, and other illnesses.

Astonishingly, preventives and remedies for scurvy during these years were known—but largely ignored. As early as the fifth century, the Chinese were growing fresh ginger in pots on board their ships. The idea that fresh fruit and vegetables could alleviate symptoms of scurvy was, no doubt, available to other countries in Southeast Asia in contact with Chinese trading vessels. It would have been passed on to the Dutch and been reported by them to other Europeans as, by 1601, the first fleet of the English East India Company is known to have collected oranges and lemons at Madagascar on their way to the East. This small squadron of four ships was under the command of Captain James Lancaster, who carried bottled lemon juice with him on his flagship, the
Dragon.
Anyone who showed signs of scurvy was dosed with three tea-spoons of lemon juice every morning. On arrival at the Cape of Good Hope, none of the men on board the
Dragon
was suffering from scurvy, but the toll on the other three ships was significant. Despite Lancaster's instructions and example, nearly a quarter of the total crew of this expedition died from scurvy—and not one of these deaths was on his flagship.

Some sixty-five years earlier the crew members on French explorer Jacques Cartier's second expedition to Newfoundland and Quebec were badly affected by a severe outbreak of scurvy, resulting in many deaths. An infusion of needles of the spruce tree, a remedy suggested by the local Indians, was tried with seemingly miraculous results. Almost overnight the symptoms were said to lessen and the disease rapidly disappeared. In 1593 Sir Richard Hawkins, an admiral of the British navy, claimed that within his own experience at least ten thousand men had died at sea from scurvy, but that lemon juice would have been an immediately effective cure.

There were even published accounts of successful treatments of scurvy. In 1617, John Woodall's
The Surgeon's Mate
described lemon juice as being prescribed for both cure and prevention. Eighty years later Dr. William Cockburn's
Sea Diseases, or the Treatise of their Nature, Cause and Cure
recommended fresh fruits and vegetables. Other suggestions such as vinegar, salt water, cinnamon, and whey were quite useless and may have obscured the correct action.

It was not until the middle of the following century that the effectiveness of citrus juice was proven in the first controlled clinical studies of scurvy. Although the numbers involved were very small, the conclusion was obvious. In 1747, James Lind, a Scottish naval surgeon at sea in the
Salisbury,
chose twelve of the crew suffering from scurvy for his experiment. He selected men whose symptoms seemed as similar as possible. He had them all eat the same diet: not the standard salted meat and hardtack, which these patients would have found very difficult to chew, but sweetened gruel, mutton broth, boiled biscuits, barley, sago, rice, raisins, currants, and wine. Lind added various supplements to this carbohydrate-based regime. Two of the sailors each received a quart of cider daily. Two others were dosed with vinegar, and another unfortunate pair received diluted elixir of vitriol (or sulfuric acid). Two more were required to drink half a pint of seawater daily, and another two were fed a concoction of nutmeg, garlic, mustard seed, gum myrrh, cream of tartar, and barley water. The lucky remaining pair was issued daily two oranges and one lemon each.

The results were sudden and visible and what we would expect with today's knowledge. Within six days the men who received the citrus fruit were fit for duty. Hopefully, the other ten sailors were then taken off their seawater, nutmeg, or sulfuric acid regimes and also supplied with lemons and oranges. Lind's results were published in
A Treatise of Scurvy,
but it was another forty years before the British navy began the compulsory issue of lemon juice.

If an effective treatment for scurvy was known, why wasn't it acted upon and used routinely? Sadly, the remedy for scurvy, though proven, seems to have not been recognized or believed. A widely held theory blamed scurvy on a diet of either too much salted meat or not enough fresh meat rather than a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables. Also, there was a logistical problem: it was difficult to keep fresh citrus fruit or juice for weeks at a time. Attempts were made to concentrate and preserve lemon juice, but such procedures were time consuming, costly, and perhaps not very effective, as we now know that vitamin C is easily destroyed by heat and light and that long-term storage reduces the amount in fruits and vegetables

Because of expense and inconvenience, naval officers, physicians, the British admiralty, and shipowners could see no way of growing sufficient greens or citrus fruit on heavily manned vessels. Precious cargo space would have to be used for this purpose. Fresh or preserved citrus fruit was expensive, especially if it was to be allocated daily as a preventive measure. Economy and the profit margin ruled—although, in hindsight, it does seem that this was a false economy. Ships had to be manned above capacity to allow for a 30, 40 or even 50 percent death rate from scurvy. Even without a high death rate, the effectiveness of a crew suffering from scurvy would have been remarkably low. And then there was the humane factor—rarely considered during these centuries.

Another element was the intransigence of the average crew. They were used to eating the standard ship's fare, and although they complained about the monotonous diet of salt meat and ship's biscuit when they were at sea, what they wanted in port was lots of fresh meat, fresh bread, cheese, butter, and good beer. Even if fresh fruit and vegetables were available, the majority of the crew would not have been interested in a quick stir-fry of tender crunchy greens. They wanted meat and more meat—boiled, stewed, or roasted. The officers, who generally came from a higher social class, where a wider and more varied diet was common, would have found eating fruit and vegetables in port to be normal and probably highly acceptable. It would not have been unusual for them to be interested in trying exotic new foodstuffs to be found in the locales where they made landfall. Tamarinds, limes, and other fruits high in vitamin C would have been used in the local cuisine that they, unlike the crew, might try. Scurvy was thus usually less of a problem among a ship's officers.