Sailor and Barrels of Navy Chow

Needless to say, under these conditions, the psychological health of sailors was often in question.

“Give me a discharge and let me go home,” a distraught coal heaver begged his skipper after months of duty outside of Charleston.  “I am a poor, weak, miserable, nervous, half crazy boy.  Everything jarred upon my delicate nerves.”

This routine was accompanied by an unbroken diet of moldy beans, stale biscuits, and sour pork.

To ease the monotony or perhaps to anesthetize themselves from reality, mess crews specialized in the manufacture of outlaw whiskey distilled from almost any substance that fermented in the southern heat.  Commanding officers and medical officers assigned to the James River Flotilla complained a great deal of the lack of fresh provisions and vegetables.

Following a July 1862  inspection, Fleet Surgeon of the North Atlantic Squadron, Dr. James Wood, recommended that vessels be furnished with fresh provisions twice a week.  His report on his inspection also contained a recommendation for improving the water supply used in the vessels.  He said that the “turbid and objectionable” river water, which they drank, tended to produce diarrhea.  He saw no reason for continuing to use impure river water, since steam vessels could condense more pure water than their crews needed.

Even though sanitary conditions aboard ship were often superior to those ashore, and both navies probably fared better than the armies when it came to the frequency of disease, rheumatism and scurvy kept the doctors busy along with typhoid, dysentery, break bone fever, hemorrhoids, and seasickness.