Feeding Neptune: Food and nutrition in the Catalan-Aragonese fleet,1282–1302

Napoleon Bonaparte once said ‘An army travels on its stomach’. Likewise, it could be said that a medieval fleet floated on its stomach. During the War of the Sicilian Vespers (1282–1302), the Catalan-Aragonese fleet managed to repeatedly defeat its Angevin opponent despite having fewer ships, men and resources. Much of this success was due to the management of the fleet by the Office of the Admiral under the direction of Admiral Roger de Lauria. While most studies have focused on the ships, tactics and strategy employed by a medieval fleet, only passing consideration has been given to the logistics required to maintain the crews. As the trials of the Olympias and research by John Pryor have shown, Mediterranean crews required prodigious amounts of water. ¹ What is often less discussed is the food and calorie intake required to maintain the performance of the crews. The accounts of the Catalan-Aragonese fleet at the Archivo de la Catedral de Valencia (ACV) yield information concerning how the fleet was fed, as well as some insight into the dietary requirements of an average crew of a galley in a well-managed medieval fleet.

Properly feeding the crews was obviously important for the overall performance of the fleet. In this respect, the crews of Catalan-Aragonese fleet had a diet very similar in composition, though not in proportions, to the other medieval fleets of the period. The average crewman received a ration of salt meat, cheese, chickpeas, horse bean, olive oil, red or white wine, and the ubiquitous biscuit. The salt meat and beans were mixed with spices, brine, onions and garlic to make a salsa. ² This same mixture would continue to be used in Spanish ships into eighteenth century. The actual proportions used in this mixture are unknown. The accounts do not mention the ‘spices’ used by the fleet, but meals provided to the poor by the Church suggest what was used in a salsa. For instance, the records of the Cathedral of Llerida for 1311 indicate that the poor were receiving meals very similar in composition, if not in quantity or quality, to crewmen. Llerida’s salsa included ‘pepper, ginger and saffron’. ³ It is doubtful the fleet used saffron due to the difficulty of preserving it in the conditions on board a galley. However, pepper would have kept well and any portion of the ginger root that spoiled could simply have been trimmed off.

The meal was divided into the potu (drink), the panatica (biscuit) and the companagius (cheese, meat and salsa). ⁴ Unfortunately, except for the issue of biscuit, there are no extant regulations for the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries concerning the allotment of food to the crews. However, a few entries in the accounts listing the amount of provisions placed aboard galleys and the days the galley was expected to be in service provide us with sufficient data to make some estimates of the daily rations for the crews.

The first example is for a galley of 116 oars, carrying a crew of 150 men, which was armed in 1290 for four months of operations. ⁵ The other three cases for which there is direct information concerning food loaded on board involved galleys armed in March 1292 for three months of anti-piracy patrol under Vice-Admiral Manfred Lancia. ⁶ The amount of stores loaded on board each of the four galleys, the number of days each galley was in service, the estimated daily food ration, and the estimated daily calorie content of the ration are summarized in Table 1. The daily ration estimate is based on the amount of each foodstuff loaded on each galley divided by the number of days in service and the number of crewmen on that galley. While this gives an approximate amount for the size of the portion issued to each man, these represent the minimum value in regards to several food items.

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Table 1.

Galley provisions, 1290–1292.

	Galley armedApril 1290	Galley armedMarch 1292	Galley armedMarch 1292	Galley armedMarch 1292
Number of oars	116	120	116	108
Crew
Nauclerii	8	8	8	8
Balistarii	22	26	22	25
Poderii & Bocantes	4	8	4	4
Rimerii	116	120	116	108
Total crew	150	162	150	145
Days in service	120	84	88	90
Provisions [daily ration]					Average calories	% Calories
Biscuit (kg)	16,240 [0.902]	?	?	?	3128	76
Wine (litres)	5504 [0.305]	4128 [0.303]	5504 [0.416]	4739 [0.365]	372	9
Salt pork (kg)	158.8 [0.009]	119.1 [0.009]	317.6 [0.024]	139.0 [0.011]	94	2
Cheese (kg)	1588.0 [0.088]	1576.1 [0.116]	1918.3 [0.145]	1737.7 [0.134]	487	12
Olive oil (litres)	23.4 [0.0013]	17.6 [0.0013]	23.4 [0.0018]	20.5 [0.0016]	52	1
Legumes (kg)	?	?	?	?	?	?
Total daily calories					4133
Candles (kg)	3.2	2.3	3.2	2.8
Tallow (kg)	?	158.8	158.8	79.4

The problem of obtaining an exact figure for the daily ration arises from the absolute dearth of information concerning how often each galley, or the squadron it was attached to, put into port. While in port the crews could supplement the daily food rations and there are no extant documents detailing how much in the way of private stores, if any, members of the crew were allowed to bring on board. Furthermore, there is no way to determine whether the crews were allowed to supplement their diet with fish caught from the galleys or when the fleet was beached. By the sixteenth century, we know the meals for a week were broken into meat days, fish days and cheese days, primarily based on religious grounds. Considering there is no mention of salted fish in the fleet accounts and the paltry amount of salt meat given the fleet, it is very possible that some galleys were supplementing the ship’s stores with fish, either caught or bought by the crew where possible.

Moreover, though the text and table may give the impression that the figures are precise, the reader should remember that there is a great deal concerning the preparation of medieval food for which there is no information. The caloric content of virtually all of the food items could be changed significantly simply by the method used to prepare them. The caloric content of cheese could change substantially simply based on how hard the cheese was pressed. The caloric content of biscuit by weight could vary dramatically solely according to the amount of water driven off during the second baking. Such variables make any estimate of the caloric intake of the crews just that, an estimate. However, while not precise, the values obtained can provide insights as to how well the dietary needs of the crews were being met.

The estimated daily calorie intake from each food item is based on the average of the values for the four galleys listed. In the case of the biscuit, there is only one entry. The Siete Partidas (ca. 1260) referred to biscuit as ‘a very light bread for transport because it is baked twice and lasts longer than others and does not spoil’. ⁷ It may have been ‘light’, but after a few weeks of storage the biscuit undoubtedly took on the attributes sailors over the centuries have become acquainted with, which are those normally associated with a rock. The biscuit would be broken up and put in the salsa to form gruel. Unlike the other foodstuffs. the Ordinacions of 1354 specify that each crewman was to receive two lliures (800 grams) of biscuit per day. ⁸ The fleet appears to have been issued with more than the minimum prescribed by the Ordinacions, so an average of 850 grams of biscuit per day was selected. To put this in perspective, a fleet of 20 galleys, with an average of 150 men per galley, would require approximately 230 metric tons of biscuit for a three-month voyage. ⁹

For the calorie content of each food item, several sources were used. For the biscuit, older sources were employed, primarily because they make the distinction between hardtack, or twice-baked biscuits, and biscuits served in the home. The distinction is important, for hardtack contains over 100 calories per gram more than generic baking powder biscuits. For this reason, the work of Plimmer concerning foods used by the military and populace during the First World War in Britain was used, since hardtack is specifically mentioned. The average caloric content per 100 grams for hardtack supplied to the military was 368 calories. ¹⁰

The calorie content for cheese also varied substantially depending on the source, though the values all fell somewhere between 350 and 450 calories per 100 grams. ¹¹ Again, Plimmer lists hard cheese issued to the army, but even here gives two values for the same cheese, 403 and 460 calories per 100 grams. ¹² This is probably the closest to the type of cheese being provided to the fleet. The fleet cheese was probably like a pecorino sardo, which is an uncooked hard cheese made from fresh whole sheep’s milk curdled using lamb or kid rennet. The mixture is poured into moulds that give the cheese its characteristic disk shape. After a brief period in brine, the moulds are lightly smoked and left to ripen in cool cellars. The disks are lightly baked to produce a protective rind. This system, well developed by the Roman period, is highly effective in preserving the cheese under a variety of conditions and is still used today. Because the values varied substantially, Plimmer’s lower value for military cheese was used in the calculations, primarily because it is the approximate average of the different values listed by different sources.

The value of 709 calories per 100 grams for salt pork was taken from Chatfield, mainly because her work is the only one that lists salt pork specifically. ¹³ For the olive oil, Waller’s value of 7822 calories per litre was chosen, which is very close to the values given by other sources. ¹⁴ Finally, the value for the calorie content of the wine was taken from the work of Carla Rahn Phillips concerning the Spanish Atlantic fleet in the seventeenth century. Similar to the Catalan-Aragonese fleet, the later Spanish fleet was issued with both red and white wine, and her research found the alcohol content of these wines could vary widely. The first three accounts do not provide any information on the quantities of each type bought, but the final account for 1291–1292 indicates that the fleet was purchasing three times as much white wine as red. ¹⁵ Drawing on Phillips’s analysis of this issue, an average of 575 calories per litre has been assumed. ¹⁶

Unfortunately, none of the accounts gives the amount of legumes issued to the ships, so there are no data from which to make an estimate of the calorie content for that food ration.

While Table 1 gives the impression that crew members were served each item every day, in fact the week was broken into meat and companagius days. Martin Sanuto Torsello (ca. 1320) specified that except for Friday and Saturday the crew was to receive meat in the salsa, or stew. On half of the days, half of the crew was given actual pieces of meat cooked in the salsa, while the other half received only the meat broth, except on Sunday when the entire crew was issued meat. ¹⁷ The Consolat del Mar specified a similar system in that the men should receive meat on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. On the other days, the crew was to be issued the companatge, which was defined as ‘cheese, or onion, or sardines or other fish’ and was issued in the afternoon. The wine was to be issued three times during the morning. On feast days the crew was supposed to receive a double ration of food and drink. ¹⁸

The majority of calories in the rations came from the biscuit, which amounted to over three-quarters of daily calorific intake. This is not unusual and is similar to information for other fleets. What is of interest is that the major source of protein was cheese and not meat. Cheese provided 12 per cent of the daily calories, compared to meat, which provided only 2 per cent. Moreover, there is no mention of fish as a food source in any of the accounts for the fleet. The lack of salt fish is surprising since Sicily had a substantial fishing industry regulated by the Crown. ¹⁹ Venice did supply fish to some of its ships, so it would appear that storage was not a problem. ²⁰ Moreover, the Consolat del Mar mentions sardines and ‘other fish’ as part of the companatge the captain should provide to the crew. ²¹ Assuming there was not a problem with storage, then either the availability or cost must have been the controlling factor for the absence of fish in the diet of the crews. The lack of fish in the diet is more surprising considering that compared to the other medieval fleets the men were receiving an extremely small ration of salted meat that amounted to only ten grams per day.

The meals provided were not that much different from those being eaten by commoners, and even the poor, in regards to the portions of wine and meat. The proportions of cheese, meat, legumes, wine and biscuit are strikingly similar to those provided to the poor by various charities in Catalonia during this period. Bertran I. Roigé has shown that the poor received approximately 78 per cent of their calories from bread, which is similar to the 76 per cent the crews received from the biscuit ration. ²² Likewise, the poor seemed to have received approximately 9 per cent of their calories from wine, compared to the crews, which received 12 per cent. ²³ The types of vegetables provided to the poor also were similar to those supplied to crews, though again we do not know the quantities. In the thirteenth century, for example, the poor in Avila are recorded as having received leeks, garlic, onions and garbanzos, and later asparagus, spinach, lentils and beans. ²⁴ The main difference was the quantity and quality of the meals provided to the poor, which often included meat from sick animals and amounted to only 2379 calories per day according to Bertrán. ²⁵ The 4000 plus calories the crews were receiving was far above the average. It has been estimated the clergy received between 4700 and 6880 calories per day, whereas the average day labourer was ingesting approximately 3500 calories. ²⁶ Considering that 4100 calories for the crews is a minimum, because of the lack of information about the quantity of legumes provided, the crews were obviously well fed.

Two ration items given to the Aragonese crews were substantially different in their amount compared to other fleets. One of the items that stands out is the quantity of cheese supplied. The amount of cheese provided to the Aragonese crews is highly skewed, with a ratio of 0.10 meat to cheese. The extent of the skew becomes apparent when it is compared to the ratios for the Angevin and Venetian fleets of the time, which were 1.25–1.4 and 1.3 respectively. Why the Aragonese relied so heavily on cheese is unknown. The fleet did have a significant number of Muslim mercenary cavalry, and the reliance on cheese may reflect an attempt to accommodate their dietary restriction against consuming pork. It should also be noted that while the wine ration for the Aragonese fleet was similar to that of the Venetians, the Aragonese were a much more sober crowd than their Angevin opponents who were receiving six times as much. ²⁷

In summary, the crews received a substantial daily ration, which is not surprising considering their strenuous work of rowing the galleys, and the emphasis placed on maintaining healthy crews. The above data show the Office of the Admiral took the issue seriously. Crew members were supplied with at least 4100 calories per day. While the meals may have become monotonous, it clear from the performance of the fleet during the War of Sicilian Vespers that the meals were more than adequate.