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Home » Diet » Diet of Nelson's Navy remained 'virtually unchanged for 200 yrs'

Washington, Mar 24 (ANI): Salt beef, sea biscuits and the occasional weevil - the food endured by sailors during the Napoleonic wars is rarely considered to be tempting.

Now a new chemical analysis technique has allowed archaeologists to find out just how dour the diet of Georgian sailors really was.

The team's findings, also reveal how little had changed for sailors in the 200 years between the Elizabethan and Georgian eras.

The research, led by Professor Mark Pollard from the University of Oxford, focused on bones from 80 sailors who served from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries and were buried in Royal Naval Hospital cemeteries in Plymouth and Portsmouth.

"An isotopic analysis of bone collagen from the recovered skeletons allowed us to reconstruct average dietary consumption," said Dr Pollard.

"By comparing these findings to primary documentary evidence we can build a more accurate picture of life in Nelson's navy."

In the late 18th century the Royal Navy employed 70,000 seamen and marines.

Feeding so many men was a huge logistical challenge requiring strictly controlled diets including flour, oatmeal, suet, cheese, dried pork, beer, salted cod and ships biscuits when at sea.

The team's analysis shows that the diet of the sailors was consistent with contemporary documentary records such as manifests and captain's logs.

As well as validating the historical interpretation of sailors' diets, this finding has implications for the amount of marine protein, which can be isotopically detected in human diets.

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Diet of Nelson's Navy remained 'virtually unchanged for 200 yrs'

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Home » Diet » Diet of Nelson's Navy remained 'virtually unchanged for 200 yrs'