How long can a colonial ship stay at sea?

The colonial era in Europe mostly took place between the 16th and 18th centuries and involved dozens of wars and millions of miles sailed. During this age, new and exotic lands were discovered and riches beyond imagination made countless people wealthy through the trade of spices and foreign goods. The only way for all this trade and war to take place was through the use of ships, and so new vessels were designed to be able to withstand huge voyages for as many people as possible.

How long would a ship stay at sea for?

Some voyages could take years to complete, such as those on whaling missions or the early days of the spice trade in Southeast Asia, but the ships themselves were only designed to be at sea for no more than six months in the worst-case scenario. The journey between the UK and the East Coast of America took anywhere between 6 and 12 weeks depending on the ship and it was unusual for it to take longer. Most ships would consider 3 months to be the safe limit with anything over that becoming too risky.

How long would a ship sail for?

The distance between the south coast of England and the southern tip of India is around 12,000 miles (19,312.13 km) and would take around 6 months to complete. When faced with such a long voyage it would be too risky to try and make it all at once and so supply ports were established along the most popular trade routes. On a six-month voyage to India, a ship would stop several times to fill up with fresh water and buy food, so the longest a ship will be at sea is unlikely to be more than 12 weeks in the worst cases.

How fast can a colonial ship sail?

Ships between the 16th and 18th centuries maintained their speeds over the years and would travel a distance of between 100 and 150 miles per day. The reason is that the hull speed of a sailing ship is around 1.35 times the square root of the waterline length in feet, so a ship of average length that has a height of 75 feet tall will maintain a speed of around 8 knots, which is 9.2mph. A ship twice the height could double that speed but it tops out at a certain height and a maximum safe sailing speed of little over 20mph can be reached for a ship large enough to sail for 3 months. There are a ton of factors that determine a ship’s speed, with hull shape, cargo weight, sail size and layout, and a load of environmental factors all playing a part in a ship’s sailing speed.

What’s the longest time a ship can stay at sea for?

The time would be considerably longer for the crew of an 18th-century ship purely because of improved food and water preservation techniques. The amount of time a ship could stay at sea would depend on its cargo space and how much of it was filled with food. One of the important things about staying at sea with a large crew is that there’s no way you would be able to collect enough rainwater to keep everyone alive, so survival length would depend mostly on your water supply.

One of the things they used to do from the 16th century onwards was provide the sailors with small beer instead of water. Small beer is simply just beer that has a very low alcohol content of between 1% and 2% alcohol. The reason for this is that the alcohol was strong enough to stop bacteria that can cause the water to go stagnant and cause sickness, but not strong enough to have the crew completely wasted all the time. For most of the 1600s, the standard daily ration for a sailor in the British navy was 1 gallon of small beer and a pound of hardtack each day.

What did they eat on colonial ships?

Food was chosen purely on how long it would last. Even if you had the money to buy fresh meat it wouldn’t be fresh by the time you’d been at sea for a week with no refrigeration. The foods they took stayed the same up until the invention of tinned food during the early 1800s. The most common foods eaten on sailing ships during this early age are as follows:

Hardtack
Also known as ships biscuit, this is the most common food eaten on ships by far due to its very long life span. Hardtack is nothing more than bread that’s been baked without yeast and cooked more than once, or just for a very long time to remove every single drop of moisture. If it’s kept away from the air it can last for years and provides guaranteed food for the entire journey. The only problem was when it came to eating it, with stories of people having to soak it in milk or water before it was edible. One popular use was to smash it into crumbs and mix it into a liquid dish to use as a thickener and add some calories.

Salt pork
The most popular meat was salt pork since it lasted for much longer than any other type of meat. The pork would be cut into thin steaks and placed in a container on top of a layer of salt, then the container would be filled with alternating layers of salt and meat until it was full. Hot water that was very heavily salted would be poured in to push out the air and if done properly could be edible for as long as 6 months, though this would be pushing it. Salt pork was inedible unless you were able to soak it in freshwater with several changes to flush out the salt since eating it directly would be like drinking concentrated seawater.

Dried grain
For the poorer travelers this meant having some dried wheat or barley that would be mixed into a liquid dish, but for the better off it would mean fresh bread every day. Dried grain lasts for years and can be made into flour whenever needed, but it was only the people who had access to the ship’s oven and the fuel to use it that would have this in their diet.

Pickled goods
Eggs, onions, gherkins, and even things like tomatoes would be put into jars with some vinegar to preserve them. Anything that could be preserved this way would be used because it meant eating something more than rock-hard bread for 3 months.

Stockfish
It can sometimes take weeks to dry fish out properly but when it’s ready it’s known as stockfish and if kept in the right conditions can be edible for years. The problem was that it was so dry that it wouldn’t be possible to eat without soaking it for a few hours, and people often had to tenderize it beforehand by beating it with a hammer.

Oil stored fish
Fresh fish would be filleted and smoked before being placed in a sealable container and covered in vegetable oil. This was an early version of tinned fish, and they would choose fish based on their natural oil content since these were the most preservable. Sardines and mackerel were the top choices for British sailors but this method wasn’t used very often due to the cost of the vegetable oil.

Alcohol
Small beer was given as a ration in replacement of water, but as for normal alcohol wine, rum, and regular beer were the most common. Rum became very popular with sailors as it could be bought in America for cheap and a barrel of rum would last as long as five barrels of beer. Rum was given out as a standard ration for quite some time across numerous nations in Europe and has become associated with sailors ever since.

Dried Vegetables
Chickpeas, peas, beans, and lentils were dried and made up the main body of a stew along with some salt pork or fish. There were few vegetables that could be dried and last for anything longer than a couple of weeks, so the choice was very limited to the vegetables that had.

Other foods
Fresh fruit and vegetables may only be good for a couple of weeks, but they can make the first two weeks of a voyage much more pleasant. Most sailors didn’t have the choice to buy fresh things and lived on rations, but for private passengers who could afford it, dinner time would be the highlight for the first couple of weeks.