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Back in the day a Royal Navy sailor's daily ration of beer was a gallon, or a half pint of 115 proof rum. I don't think the dainty wineglasses are a good indica

Back in the day a Royal Navy sailor's daily ration of beer was a gallon, or a half pint of 115 proof rum. I don't think the dainty wineglasses are a good indication of volume consumed.

dragonwriter 9y ago
OTOH, the phrase “drink like a sailor” for heavy consumption of alcohol exists for a reason; RN alcohol rations probably aren't a good indication of society-wide consumption patterns.
rsynnott 9y ago
If a sailor died of cirrhosis at 40, though, the Navy wasn’t too bothered. Alcohol is more of a heath threat these days partially because consumption has tended to rise, but also because people aren’t dying of other things as much.
- Amezarak 9y ago
  > but also because people aren’t dying of other things as much. Historical life expectancies were usually not that bad. The shortness of pre-modern life is generally grossly exaggerated, with the raw numbers being dragged down by things like infant mortality. See, for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ > Analysis of the mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today, and the incidence of degenerative disease was 10% of ours. In times of great calamities like massive, prolonged wars and plagues - which some societies are more susceptible to than others [1] - things certainly turned grim, but by-and-large things weren't so bad. One way you can get a picture of this yourself is by looking at your genealogical history, which effectively lets you calculate "life expectancy from teens/early 20s", since all your ancestors were old enough to have kids. It's a somewhat selective picture, but if you fill out enough branches to the early 1700s, you can get a probably reasonable sample. [1] And actually, Victorian England was particularly unsanitary and subject to disease - it really says something that even a plague-ridden society of people who ate arsenic and mercury still lived just as long or longer than us.
oh_sigh 9y ago
The beer doesn't even count, as it was fortified with lime and was essentially water. The half pint(can we just say 'cup' now?) of rum is equal to about 5 shots worth. Not really enough to get any sailor shitfaced, but enough to take the edge off of a long shift of physical labor in a very harsh, unforgiving environment.
- robin_reala 9y ago
  Cup doesn’t exist in British measures, pint fractions or ml better.
- wiredfool 9y ago
  A pint is 20oz in the UK, and 16oz in the US. So a Half Pint is a 10oz glass (close to the normal 12oz 'Pint Glass' you get in American bars, or the standard beer bottle), and a full pint is nearly double the usual American beer serving. Cups aren't used. Randomly, there's a line in 1984 where a guy in a bar is lamenting the switch from Pints to Half or Full Liters, and it never made sense to me because the difference between an American pint and a half liter is ~5%, in the noise. But to the original audience, it's more like 18%.
  - madcaptenor 9y ago
    Also, a half liter is larger than an American pint (473 mL) but smaller than a UK pint (568 mL - UK fluid ounces are smaller than US fluid ounces). And I would imagine that prices wouldn't go down when they switched from imperial pints to half-liters.

Back in the day a Royal Navy sailor's daily ration of beer was a gallon, or a half pint of 115 proof rum. I don't think the dainty wineglasses are a good indication of volume consumed.

dragonwriter 9y ago

OTOH, the phrase “drink like a sailor” for heavy consumption of alcohol exists for a reason; RN alcohol rations probably aren't a good indication of society-wide consumption patterns.

rsynnott 9y ago

If a sailor died of cirrhosis at 40, though, the Navy wasn’t too bothered. Alcohol is more of a heath threat these days partially because consumption has tended to rise, but also because people aren’t dying of other things as much.

Amezarak 9y ago
> but also because people aren’t dying of other things as much. Historical life expectancies were usually not that bad. The shortness of pre-modern life is generally grossly exaggerated, with the raw numbers being dragged down by things like infant mortality. See, for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ > Analysis of the mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today, and the incidence of degenerative disease was 10% of ours. In times of great calamities like massive, prolonged wars and plagues - which some societies are more susceptible to than others [1] - things certainly turned grim, but by-and-large things weren't so bad. One way you can get a picture of this yourself is by looking at your genealogical history, which effectively lets you calculate "life expectancy from teens/early 20s", since all your ancestors were old enough to have kids. It's a somewhat selective picture, but if you fill out enough branches to the early 1700s, you can get a probably reasonable sample. [1] And actually, Victorian England was particularly unsanitary and subject to disease - it really says something that even a plague-ridden society of people who ate arsenic and mercury still lived just as long or longer than us.

oh_sigh 9y ago

The beer doesn't even count, as it was fortified with lime and was essentially water. The half pint(can we just say 'cup' now?) of rum is equal to about 5 shots worth. Not really enough to get any sailor shitfaced, but enough to take the edge off of a long shift of physical labor in a very harsh, unforgiving environment.

robin_reala 9y ago
Cup doesn’t exist in British measures, pint fractions or ml better.
wiredfool 9y ago
A pint is 20oz in the UK, and 16oz in the US. So a Half Pint is a 10oz glass (close to the normal 12oz 'Pint Glass' you get in American bars, or the standard beer bottle), and a full pint is nearly double the usual American beer serving. Cups aren't used. Randomly, there's a line in 1984 where a guy in a bar is lamenting the switch from Pints to Half or Full Liters, and it never made sense to me because the difference between an American pint and a half liter is ~5%, in the noise. But to the original audience, it's more like 18%.
- madcaptenor 9y ago
  Also, a half liter is larger than an American pint (473 mL) but smaller than a UK pint (568 mL - UK fluid ounces are smaller than US fluid ounces). And I would imagine that prices wouldn't go down when they switched from imperial pints to half-liters.