Navy Rum - Fair Winds - Blogpost by Carsten Øhlenschlæger

Navy Rum - A term filled with stories and myths. Read on as we delve a little deeper into the topic in this blog post.

Rome and the maritime have been linked for many centuries and especially in the military navies of the English-speaking countries, this bond has been extremely close. In this post, we'll focus on the concept of Navy Rum and hopefully confirm or debunk some of the many myths surrounding the subject.

Let's start by looking at seafaring as it was in the 1500s and 1600s, when the world's great colonial powers began to explore the world in earnest and discovered the logistical problems that came with the expansion of empires. Sailors, no matter how tough and rough they were, naturally needed food and drink on long journeys and the natural choice today would be to just take enough drinking water for the trip, but large glass containers were still very expensive to produce and were too fragile on the open sea. Metal containers weren't an option either, as we hadn't even gotten that far technologically yet. Everything was therefore shipped in wooden barrels, which poses a problem in terms of clean drinking water. Barrels are porous and alive, which is exactly why they are used for storing spirits, but it also makes them highly unsuitable for storing drinking water. After a few days or weeks on the open sea, the water would be completely undrinkable, taste stale and sour or even be covered in green algae. By this time it was already well known that alcohol didn't have the same tendency to go bad with prolonged storage, so the navies of the world naturally started taking alcohol with them on long voyages instead of water, preferring an alcohol that was available in the area they came from, so the French took wine or brandy, the Portuguese took port, the Spanish took sherry and so on. The British brewed beer, so naturally they chose beer as their tipple of choice.

Navy Rum
When are you going to get to that rum? Easy, easy, it's coming now! In 1492, Christopher Columbus rediscovered America when he landed his ships in what is now the Bahamas, most likely on the island of San Salvador. This set off a race between the world's empires to conquer as much of the new land as possible and thus began one of the darkest chapters in the history of the slave trade, but that's a story for another time. As the New World was particularly suitable for growing sugar cane, this crop was planted far and wide, and being human, it wasn't long before we discovered that alcohol could be distilled from the sugary liquid. All ships sailing between the Old and New Worlds only carried provisions for the outward journey and had to replenish their stocks before returning home, thus forever linking rum and seafaring.

It is not known when actual rations of rum began to be given to the crew, but the first record of this practice dates back to 1731, when it was determined that crew in the British Royal Navy were entitled to either 8 imperial pints (approximately 4.5 liters or 1 imperial gallon) of beer or ½ imperial pint (28.4 centiliters) of spirits per day. Until then, it had been up to the captain of each ship to decide how much went to each member of the crew.

Just under half a bottle of liquor a day is still a lot, and managing a ship with a crew of more or less intoxicated sailors must have been a challenge. Rations were therefore reduced over the years and one of the most famous examples of this dates back to 1740, when Admiral Edward Vernon, nicknamed Old Grog, chose to water down the crew's ration of rum with seawater so that it wouldn't hit so hard, thus coining the term Navy Grog. Hardly a particularly appetizing cocktail at the time!

Production
Around 1850, the Royal Navy formalized both the production and distribution of the daily ration or the daily tot, as the sailors called it. It was to be dispensed between 11 and 12 o'clock, when a call was made for "Up Spirits". The sailors answered this call by exclaiming "Standfast the Holy Ghost" and thus the highlight of the day could begin. By this time, however, the ration had been reduced to an eighth of a imperial pint (about 7 centiliters). Officers were given the rum neat, while enlisted sailors were given it watered down with ⅔ parts water.

The production of Navy Rum from this time was also centralized back in the UK and distributed to the ships directly from there, giving it a unique flavour profile. There has never been an exact opskrift, but of course, they primarily brought rum home from their own colonies and blended them together. The core of Navy Rum has probably always been the heavy rum from Guyana with its notes of chocolate and coffee, which has then been mixed with fruity rum from Barbados, funky rum from Jamaica and a slightly lighter distillate from Trinidad. That's not to say there hasn't been other rums, but these four places have undoubtedly formed the foundation of a classic Navy Rum. The rum has been blended in several places, but the largest and most important place has been the Royal Victoria Victualling Yard in London. Here, the Navy had 32 blending vats with a total capacity of 230,000 imperial gallons (just over 1 million liters). These blending vats were connected to each other so that new rum was poured into one end and bottled at the other. A bit like a solera system or we can also call it the world's largest "infinity bottle".

Navy Strength
Another term often used in connection with Navy Rum is Navy Strength and here we should keep our tongue in our mouth. Today, alcohol is often measured in ABV (Alchol By Volume), which means that a 40% spirit contains 40% alcohol. In the US, a term called Proof is used and it's really just a doubling of ABV, so an 80 Proof bourbon contains 40% alcohol, a 100 Proof bourbon contains 50% alcohol and so on. Of course, the British can't be that simple, and at the time they used Imperial Proof as a unit of measurement for alcohol, which is also the basis for one of the biggest myths. Imperial Proof is based on whether or not gunpowder that has been soaked in alcohol can ignite. If the gunpowder is ignitable, then the alcohol percentage (depending on the nature of the gunpowder, temperature and so on) is higher than 57.14%. This means that spirits at 57.14% are "at proof", spirits above are overproof and spirits below are underproof. This has led many of today's producers to call 57% alcohol Navy Strength, but this is incorrect! A decree from 1866 states that the rum that is distributed must be 4.5% underproof. Oops, now we have to do the math... 4.5% from 57.14% must give 54.56% and thus the official Navy Strength is around 54.5% and not 57%. No more math today, I promise!

Black Tot Day
All good things must come to an end and eventually common sense must prevail. On July 31, 1970, the last daily rations were distributed in the Royal Navy, which the sailors were certainly not happy about and the day became known as Black Tot Day. The Americans had already stopped daily rations in 1862 and Australia in 1921, Canada stopped in 1972, while New Zealand continued until 1990. In connection with the abolition of the daily rations, some bottles, each containing 1 imperial gallons, were bottled with the last Navy Rum. Two of these bottles are at Whisky.dk and in connection with Whiskymessen 2023, one of them will be opened so that we all have the opportunity to taste a small piece of history.

If you want to experience the Navy Rum style today, there are several brands that are trying to recreate it. The most well-known are Pusser's and Black Tot, which we'll write more about at some point.

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