WHY TARS ARE JOLLY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 375, 9 November 1932, Page 2

WHY TARS ARE JOLLY

THE COMMISSARIAT MEDITERR AN E AN FLEET IS A FLOATING STOKE HOUSE. ECONOMY AND YARIETY. When the Mediterranean "Fleet goes to sea for a two-months cruise as it has done recently — each big battleship becomes an immense storehouse of provisions. . The flagship, the Queen Elizabeth, carries 1100 men, -each of hvhom requires four meals a day for 60 days— total 264,000 meals, for which almost all the ingredients have to t>ej taken aboard before the ships leaves Malta. Potatoes and other vegetables, and fresh fruit can be bought m some foreign ports of call. The rest ; goes m a dozen or more separate- holds frigerated for fresh meat) right down over the ship's keel. Here are some of the items that H.M.S. Resolution, with ohly 900 men in the general mess, requires . durmg an average cruise: Beef, 13,6501b; mutton, 48401b; ,other meats (s^sages, liver, rabbit, ham, veal, etc.), 16,8bUit), bacon, 86001b; eggs, 2588 dozen; potatoes, 34,0301b; onions, 90801b; cabhage, 45001b; other fresh vegetables beetroot, cucumbers, tomato, etc.), 96401b; butter, 24001b; 56801b; frozen and cured nsh, y/4Uip. All bread is fresh baked daily m the ship, ahd meat is roasted in vast oven heated hy coal fires. Pity the peor cooks! The temperature m which they work on Mediterranean summer days is just about all a man can stand. And yet most of them are still plump fellows! Every day, in addition to the daily rations of perishable goods from the stores mentioned ahove, the crew require 8111b of bread, 671b of jam, marmalade and syrup, 451b of tea, , 252 tins of millc, and 2551b of sugar. Fresh milk is never served in the Mediterranean Fleet. Local supplies are regarded as too dangeroUs to health. Lime Juice Issue. There is a daily issue to all hands of. lime juice — "servica lime juice," it is called — ana it has a very pleasant taste, being stored in old rum casks. The issue is hy weight — 641b a day in H.M.S. Resolution, for exampls. Only about one-third of a ship's company now take the daily free rum issue. The remainder prefer to draw the cash in lieu — and spend it largely on extra tea. Jack, when off watch, seems now to be forever brewing himself pots of tea between decks. The Government allowance for feeding the sailor is ls ld a day. (It was formerly ls 3d, the reduction having been made at the time of the economy cuts), according to the Daily Mail. In small ships where advantage can not he taken, of large bulk buying and catering, this means that often Jack will have no more than bread and margarine for breakfast unless he buys something out of his p-ay from the canteen aboard. Specimen Diet. In the big ships, however, it is possible out of the ls ld a day to provide a really remarkable diet. Here, for two days taken a random, is the general mess menu of H.M.S. Resolution. Sunday, August 7. — Breakfast: Bacon and egg. Dinner. Roast veal with parsley stumng, roast potatoes, green peas, stewed damsons and apple and custard. Tea: Currant cake, bread and butter. Supper: Chicken, ham and tongue galantine, and pickled opions. Wednesday, August 17. — Breakfast: Sausages and mashed potatoes. Dinner; Pea soup, cold ham, boiled potatoes and haricot beans, stewed fruit and custarci, Tea-: Cux-rant bread and butter. Supper: Fried liver and bacon. How would you like, madam, to supply all this for ls ld a day? Withal, the favourite meal of. the lower deck, I am told, is bully beef and salad. At one time after the war bully beef was much out of favour. Many can still remember its monotony. It arrived gen'erally in broken bits, sticky wtih warmth. Now it reaches Jack in generous slices, still frozen from the tins, with plenty of boiled potatoes, lettuce, perhaps, and large, ripe, red, fresh tomatoes, just purchased by the messman ashore. Fall to!