Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Black Tot Day

Episode Date: August 22, 2021

For several hundred years, the British navy was the most powerful in the world. One of the things which the British navy ran on was rum. Every sailor on a British ship for hundreds of years was given a daily ration of rum. However, on one dark day, the tradition of the daily rum allotment came to an end. Learn more about Black Tot Day and why it saddened a generation of British sailors, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For several hundred years, the British Navy was the most powerful in the world. One of the things which the British Navy ran on was rum. Every sailor on a British ship was given a daily ration of rum. However, on one dark day, the tradition of a daily rum allotment came to an end. Learn more about Black Tot Day and why it saddened a generation of British sailors on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time. to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by Skillshare. If you've ever wanted to host a party to impress your friends, Skillshare can help you out. They have dozens of videos on mixology and cocktails and even how to set up a home bar. They have videos to teach you how to brew your own beer.

or make your own cider. And they can also help you become a beer connoisseur or a wine snob. These are just a few of the thousands of videos available on almost every subject imaginable. With Skillshare premium, you can have unlimited access to everything for as low as 825 per month. Go to everything-dash-everywhere.com slash Skillshare to get a free two-week trial of Skillshare premium membership, or just click on the link in the show notes. The tradition of giving sailors alcohol goes back a really long time. Being a sailor back then pretty much sucked.

You weren't paid much. The conditions on a ship were horrible. It was extremely dangerous, and there was a good chance you weren't even on the ship voluntarily. To compensate for the miserable conditions which sailors were subject to, they were given copious amounts of alcohol. At first, British sailors were given beer. The beer allotment on a ship was one gallon of beer, or eight pints per day per sailor. I should also note that these were British gallons, not American gallons, which were were 20% larger. In addition to the social benefits of giving sailors beer to improve their lives on

the ship, there was also a practical benefit to consuming beer. Alcohol sterilized water killing any pathogens which might be living in it. This was as true on land as it was on sea. People used to consume beer, cider, and wine on a daily basis instead of water because it was safer. The process of making beer also involved boiling the water, which also killed whatever might have been in it. As ships started sailing further from home, their development. a problem. Beer and wine don't last forever. Beer can go bad over time, and on longer voyages, beer took up a lot of space. One of the most common destinations for the British Navy at the time was the Caribbean. When ships sailed into port and needed to get resupplied, the most readily available

alcohol was rum, which was the most popular alcohol and the largest export of the region. It's believed that the ships began issuing rum to their cruise sometime around the middle of the 17th century. Over time, rum overtook beer and popularity. especially for sailors on extended voyages. Because rum had a higher alcohol content, it wouldn't spoil as beer would, and it would also take up less space. The standard rum ration when it was first started

was one pint of rum per sailor per day. At first, the rum ration was given to sailors as straight rum. Sailors would try to prove the strength of the alcohol by trying to burn gunpowder soaked in rum. If it could still burn, then they proved that the rum was more than 57% alcohol by volume. This is where the word proof comes from. If alcohol could burn gunpowder, then it was considered a proof alcohol. Today, proof is defined as just being two times the alcohol content by volume.

Eventually, instead of giving straight rum to sailors, it was mixed with water. Over time, a four-to-one mixture of water to rum was established, and this mixture was called Grog. This was first administered by Admiral Edward Vernon, who had the nickname of Old Grog, because he always wore a cloak made out of Grogham cloth. His nickname eventually was transferred to the drink, and that is how Grog got its name. Grog is also where the term Groggy comes from. When Grog was given out, the total rum allotment was reduced to half a pint per sailor per day. In the mid-18th century, rum was much more common on ships, but it still wasn't universal. Depending on where the ship was located, they might have given out rations of beer, wine, brandy, or some other form of alcohol. In 1795, the British Admiralty

introduced lemon juice to sailors' dialets to prevent scurvy, as well as sugar. Both of these were usually served with rum to make the drink more palatable. Eventually, lemons became unavailable due to a war with Spain, and limes were introduced as a replacement. This is where the word limey comes from, as a pejorative for the British. The room ration by this time had become affectionately known as the tot. The tot was cut in half in 1824, down to just a quarter of a pint of rum. In the 19th century, drunken sailors were becoming more of a problem, as the Navy was becoming more professional, and ships were becoming more mechanized and technical. Parliament began debating abolishing the tot as early as 1850, but nothing was ever done. That same year, however,

the Admiralty's Grog Committee decided to have the tot once again, lowering it to one-eighth of a pint, or 71 milliliters per day. And just to put that into scale, you might be familiar with, that's equivalent to about two shots of rum. Eventually, the tot was eliminated for officers in 1881 and for warrant officers in 1918. However, well into the 20th century, your average sailor was still getting the equivalent of two shots of hard liquor per day. This was the case all throughout the Second World War and for most of the Cold War. Eventually, the idea of serving rum every single day to sailors began to look very anachronistic. One MP asked the Admiralty about the status of the war.

the tot, and they replied in a written letter on December 17, 1969. Quote, the Admiralty Board concludes that the rum issue is no longer compatible with the high standards of efficiency, required now that the individual's tasks and ships are concerned with complex and often delicate machinery and systems on the correct function of which people's lives may depend, unquote. This led to what was known as the great rum debate in Parliament in January of 1970, and eventually they decided to end the tot. The last The last day the rum allotment was given out was on July 31, 1970. It became known as Black Tot Day.

At 11 a.m. at the usual time the tot was given out, all the ships of the Royal Navy distributed the final tot. Some sailors wore black armbands to honor the occasion, and on a few ships, they even held mock funerals complete with a procession and bagpipes. The post office in Portsmouth, England, issued a special stamp cancellation on that day, with the slogan, last issue of rum to the Royal Navy, 31 July, 1970. Other navies who still had rum allocations kept the tradition going a bit longer.

Canada got rid of theirs in 1972, and New Zealand kept it until 1990. The tot had developed many traditions over time. One was the use of the phrase splice the main brace. A brace was a thick rope that was used to move sails. The main brace was the largest rope used to control the mainsail. During a battle, if the main brace was cut, it had to be spliced together in the middle of combat, or the ship was dead in the water. If the main brace was spliced, then an extra ration of rum would be given out as a reward. Eventually, splice the main brace became a general phrase for issuing an extra serving of rum, regardless of the reason.

In World War II, the Splice the Main Brace order was often given out by American submarine captains after successfully sinking an enemy ship. The reward for them was usually shots of whiskey. Today, in the British Navy, the Splice the Main Brace order, can only be given out by the monarch or by the Admiralty. Another tradition that developed was a toast for every day of the week. On Mondays, the toast was to our ships at sea. On Tuesdays, the toast was for our sailors. Wednesdays were for ourselves.

Thursdays were for a bloody war or a sickly reason, because war or sickness were your best chances of getting promoted. Fridays were to toast. toasted to a willing foe and sea room. Saturdays were to sweethearts and wives, and the standard response to the toast was, may they never meet. Finally, Sundays were toast to absent friends. The tradition of naval rum is still kept alive today by a few distilleries who make rum to the original recipe of the British Navy. Pouser's rum uses the original recipe, and it's still sold today. It may seem odd that the British Navy was giving out hard liquor every day to sailors, even when they

we're working on nuclear-powered submarines, but it's true. So the next time you have a serving of rum, take a moment to think of the sailors and chips, who had to go dry 51 years ago on Black Tot Day. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters, merchandise, and even opportunities for a show producer credit. If you know someone you think would enjoy the show, please share it with them. Also remember, if you leave a five-star review, I'll read a review on the show.