6 Foods Pirates Really Ate at Sea

During the Age of Sail, it might be weeks or even months before a ship was able to return to dry land and its crew was able to replenish their supplies.

As a result, a ship’s supplies were often well stocked with anything and everything that could withstand the long journey: bread, salted meat, butter, cheese, and ale (which kept longer than fresh water) were all common staples. Contrary to popular belief, however, naval ships were often kept rather well equipped for long sea journeys, thanks to an ever-improving knowledge of safe preservation techniques, and a global network of supply ports and naval bases at which ships could safely dock for days at a time before continuing their journey. Pirate ships, however, didn’t have quite the same luxury. 

As they operated on the wrong side of the law, pirates couldn’t exactly sail into a port any time they needed to, and as a result, their onboard supplies weren’t quite so well stocked, nor able to be quite so frequently replenished.

As if life as a pirate were not hard or dangerous enough, ultimately, the food on a pirate’s plate was often basic, bland, and just on the wrong side of fresh. 

HARD TACK

Naval “bread” in the Age of Sail was more often than not served up in the form of a dense, dry, flour-and-water dough biscuit known as hard tack. Although not exactly fresh nor flavorful, the tack nonetheless kept longer than ordinary bread—although after months at sea, even it would still typically end up infested with weevils. 

LIVESTOCK PRODUCE (AND THEN THE LIVESTOCK) 

Depending on where they were setting out from, at the start of a journey ships were sometimes able to stock up with simple livestock, such as chickens and goats, that, unlike larger livestock like sheep and cows, would typically eat whatever was given to them, and were therefore easier to maintain. (Pirates, meanwhile, might be able to plunder livestock from the ships they attacked.) Keeping chickens onboard therefore guaranteed a supply of eggs, while goats could supply fresh milk—but as the supplies on board understandably dwindled, the livestock themselves would often end up on the menu as desperate times called for desperate measures. Nonetheless, as unwise as eating your only source of fresh produce might sound, at least their meat was fresh.  

SALTED MEAT

Salting and drying meat was certainly one way of keeping it fresh for longer periods of time, ensuring that a ship’s crew had a nutritious and filling source of protein regardless of how far from land they were. The quality of the meat couldn’t always be guaranteed, however, and onboard pirate ships in particular it was often particularly grim. There are even reports of ship’s beef being so tough that the crew found it more useful as a means of making belts and straps—whereas the meat supplies of one crew, that of buccaneer Henry Morgan in 1670, became so ran down that they resorted to slicing up and frying a leather bag. 

FRUIT 

As pirates often patrolled the same waters, they had the advantage of getting to know the produce available naturally in their region, which in the tropics and Caribbean often included fresh fruits. Although these didn’t keep so well onboard, a ship could nonetheless stock up on fresh produce every now and then, ensuring at least a few days’ supply of the likes of coconuts and avocados, and—after they were introduced to plantations from Southeast Asia—the likes of bananas and mangos. The English buccaneer and explorer William Dampier is even credited with the earliest English-language recipe for guacamole, written in 1697. 

LIQUOR 

As it turns out, the popular image of a rum-swilling pirate is not too far from the truth. Fresh water could quickly turn stagnant and spoil on board a ship, whereas alcohol could be kept far longer. And in the Caribbean, rum—which could be made cheaply, quickly, and plentifully from the sugarcane introduced from Southeast Asia—soon became the preferred drink of choice. Pirates could easily stock up their own supplies, or else plunder it from the merchant ships that carried an immense supply of Caribbean rum back and forth across the Atlantic during the Golden Age. 

ANYTHING THEY COULD GET THEIR HANDS ON 

Spending a long time at sea, and unable to safely restock in large ports patrolled by garrisons of soldiers, made restocking supplies on board pirate ships decidedly tricky. As a result, many ships’ crews had to improvise, and ultimately added anything and everything they could get their hands on to their menus. In his logs and diaries, for instance, the aforementioned buccaneer William Dampier recorded trying flamingo, armadillo, locusts, ostrich eggs, sea lion kangaroo, and even Galapagos tortoises during his voyages. You might not be quite so keen to try those today, but you can at least thank Dampier for introducing a handful of tastier dishes to our dining tables, as his works include the earliest records of not only guacamole, but tortilla chips and soy sauce too. 

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