What do Pirates eat?

When the pirate voyage starts, things start out great: Fresh meat, breads and cheeses. In the beginning, it’s yum yum time, but as the voyage continues, things change. Remember, pirates didn’t have refrigerators back in the day, and so they had to be creative…and that’s where the fun begins…for us anyway…because we don’t have to eat these things (unless we want to).

As the voyage dragged out at sea, the food stores progressed to dried meats, pickled vegetables, and yes fowl. Pigeons were one choice of yum yum for pirating knaves. But we can’t forget the hardtack biscuits often made from dried out, cracker-like bread that could eventually become infested with bugs, but hey, what’s the problem with that when bugs have lots of protein? So why not dip a gob of bug-bread into a goblet of rum and chew it all down?

And speaking of rum: Alcohol wasn’t just a pirate stereotype, it was a pirate need! Remember, they didn’t have lovely things like chlorinated and fluoridated water, so if they were to put water into a bunch of old, wooden barrels, what do you think would happen when bacteria or other nasty things would find their way in? So remember, pirates weren’t just a bunch of drunks. Alcohol was the chlorinated water of the 1700’s!

These are the kinds of inspirational ideas that create the food on board Laura’s ship, with their infamous galley chef, Mr. Kookie Biscuit: a man who earned his seafaring nickname for grinding pine boxes into powder and mixing them with sticky things like squashed bugs and rat guts (but let’s keep that to ourselves because the crew never ever knew just how Kookie got his biscuits to stick). And instead of pigeons, Kookie had a particular taste for the fried webbed feet of seagulls. Luckily for all of us, he doesn’t have a cookbook for sale (just yet).