Ship’s biscuit was the staple item in the diet of a sailor. It was a bread supplement and was called ‘hard tack’ due to it being very coarse and hard. It was often infested with weevils and could be used years after it was baked. Hard tack came to mean food that was unappetising and almost too bad to eat.

Mariners ate a breakfast meal of biscuits, wine, and a little salted pork or some sardines. The noon meal or dinner was the largest meal of the day and supper was served before sunset and it consisted of a quantity of half of what was eaten at noon.

A seaman’s life was hard, and he had to be tough to survive, so ship’s officers kept strict discipline on board. In this way they hoped to keep morale high and prevent mutiny. Seamen could be ‘tarred and feathered’, tied to a rope, swung overboard and ducked or ‘keel-hauled’, dragged round the underneath of the ship.

A recent study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, based on an analysis of nitrogen and carbon isotopes extracted from the bones of 80 18th-century British sailors, indicates that they ate just what the Royal Navy’s Victualling Board ordered as official rations: bread, beef, an occasional dollop …

In sailing ships, the toilet was placed in the bow somewhat above the water line with vents or slots cut near the floor level allowing normal wave action to wash out the facility. Only the captain had a private toilet near his quarters, at the stern of the ship in the quarter gallery.

To keep the crew hydrated, ships typically stored three types of liquid sustenance: water, beer, and rum. First, they’d drink the water. Of course, sailors and pirates didn’t just drink rum straight.

Sailors were given a daily tot of rum from 1655 until the ration was abolished, as recently as 1970. Originally it was given to sailors neat when the beer ran out (water was not safe to drink as it became rancid very quickly at sea and it was often taken from polluted rivers, such as the Thames).

The captain had to maintain the supply of water, and if there was a source of fresh water on their journey they would stock up again. If the supply ran down or out the sailors would go crazy drinking water with too much salt in it, which would cause psychosis and is likely the cause of some mutany situations.

The earliest European sailors used barrels laced with alcohol to keep algae from growing. Whenever a ship reached land, replenishing its fresh water was usually the most important task. By the 1700s, inventors had created distillation plants that used a heat source to boil seawater.

Water, rum, and lime was the pirate’s well-known drink of choice. The navy also used this drink for their sailors, so the sailors would stay hydrated, and this was rationed to them only two times a day, but the pirates drank their drink of choice anytime they wanted.

One of the first things the Captain did when a ship made port was to re-water. If this was an island then he would was send a launch full of crewmen with empty barrels to look for fresh water. The alternative was to catch rain using the sails and buckets set up along the upper deck scuppers.

Sailors swabbed the deck for several reasons, the first being to clean and preserve the deck. By working salt water into the wood of the deck it prevented the growth of fungus and washed freshwater away which would rot the wood. The second reason was that it swelled the wood, making the ship more watertight.

Sailors swabbed the deck — and not just to keep it clean. The saltwater helped keep down mildew on the wooden boards and kept them swollen to reduce leaks. The crew’s toilet was a hole at the bow or head of the ship. Sailors would scrub off worms that ate through the hull planking, Duffus said.

: a partial deck above a ship’s main afterdeck.

The term actually refers to washing the floor of the ship. Swabbing the deck is usually performed in order to keep the mold and moss from growing over the wooden deck, while at the same time it also helps in keeping the planks swelled up. Thereby leaving very little room for the water to get under the lower decks.

Holystone is a soft and brittle sandstone that was formerly used in the Royal Navy and US Navy for scrubbing and whitening the wooden decks of ships.

Ahoy – A pirate greeting, or a shout to attract an attention. Something like “Hello!” or “Yo!”. Arrr, Arrgh, Yarr, Gar – A common pirate terms, which are used in different situations.