[Sca-cooks] Lemons as antiscorbutics

[Jeff Gedney]

John Smith in his 1626 book on ships and sailing, A Sea Grammar has the following line in his instructions regarding the proper victualling of a ship for a voyage to sea:

"A Commander at Sea should doe well to thinke the contrary, and provide for himselfe and company in like manner; also seriously to consider what will bee his charge to furnish himselfe at Sea with bedding, linnen, armes, and apparrell, how to keepe his table aboord, and his expences on shore, and provide his petty Tally, which is a competent proportion according to your number of these particulars following.
 Fine wheat flower close and well packed, Rice, Currands, Sugar, Prunes, Cynamon, Ginger, Pepper, Cloves, greene Ginger, Oyle, Butter, Holland cheese, or old Cheese, Wine vineger, Canarie sacke, Aqua vitæ, the best Wines, the best waters, the juyce of Limons for the scurvy, white Bisket, Oatmeale, gammons of Bacon, dried Neats tongues, Beefe packed up in vineger, Legs of Mutton minced and stewed, and close packed up, with tried sewet or butter in earthen pots. "

In 1610 the Governor of Jamestown Lord la Ware took scurvy while travelling to Jamestown, and he was force for his health to repair to "the western isles" by which I think he means the Bahamas:
"In these extremities I resolved to consult with my friends, who finding nature spent in me, and my body almost consumed, my paines likewise daily increasing, gave me advice to preferre a hopefull recoverie, before an assured ruine, which must necessarily have ensued, had I lived but twentie daies longer in Virginia, wanting at that instant both food and Physicke, fit to remedie such extraordinary diseases; wherefore I shipped my selfe with Doctor Bohun and Captaine Argall, for Mevis in the West Indies, but being crossed with Southerly winds, I was forced to shape my course for the Westerne Iles, where I found helpe for my health, and my sicknesse asswaged, by the meanes of fresh dyet, especially Oranges and Limons, and undoubted remedie for that disease: then I intended to have returned backe againe to Virginia, but I was advised not to hazard my selfe, before I had perfectly recovered my strength: so I came for England; in which accident, I doubt not but men of judgement will imagine, there would more prejudice have happened by my death there, than I hope can doe by my returne."

So as far as lemons, and oranges, go, here appears to have been a plantations in the American tropics long established, by this time and at least a rudmentary awareness of the efficacy of citrus as an antiscorbutic. 

Capt Elias
-Renaissance Geek of the Cyber Seas

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If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather 
wood, divide the work, and give orders.  Instead, teach them
to yearn for the vast and endless sea. 
  - Antoine de Saint Exupery