Oh What A Time... - #86 In the Navy (Free subscriber episode!)

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

As a special summer treat in amongst our Alexander The Great mini-series, we thought we'd drop a subscriber episode onto the feed.This episode was made available for subscribers on new year's eve 2024 and in it, Tom Craine has been exploring the reality of life in the navy; from being kidnapped on a night out and thrown aboard a ship, incredible rum rations, right through to sharing a ship with hundreds of rats - it’s all here.We'll be back soon for more Oh What a Time but if you'd like to email the show, you can do so via: [e-mail]-pip! Chris, Tom and Elis xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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because I've realised recently that at the ripe old age of 44 I now walk more carefully downstairs in case I have a fall and I like to think of myself as fairly young and with it to use a phrase that's about 70 years old and you know I'm relatively physically fit

I think I look all right for my age but now I just had to go walk downstairs because we had an Amazon delivery and I was walking down the stairs I held onto the banister and I didn't jump those final two steps like I used to when I was young I thought no no

what if you have a fall A little banister boy I used to be the little banister boy As if everyone knew me Ellis James, the little banister boy Jump in those last two steps But now I'm like actually it's too risky When I go upstairs Elle

I go up two at a time I thought about it Sprightly Is that normal? It keeps you young. Yeah, it keeps you young. Yeah, keeps you limbaugh. I now often don't have a pudding if I'm eating out late after 9pm.

Just in case it doesn't sit properly. At the ripe old age of 44. When I was about 21, I fell down some stairs quite badly. And I remember thinking at the time, that would finish me off in 60 years. Yes. I did that on my 18th birthday. Yeah. At the boat of pub in Bath in front of 100 people in a building.

beer garden. Yes, I fell down the stairs in the plume of feathers pub in Kmarthen and I had to go and check my bum in the toilet because I thought I'd cut my bum open. Then you realise that that crack's always there. It's fine. Everyone's got that. When I went to watch Paul McCartney,

I was, I also fell down the escalators at Oxford Circus tube on Christmas Eve about 15 years ago because I was running because I was late for something and it was wet. And again, I couldn't check my bum because obviously the escalators are a metal

I do remember thinking I remember getting Izzy to check my bum when I got home I was like I sliced my bum open and she said no it's just red Ellis for a point why have I got a problem with handrails and banisters I know this but I cannot believe for one second

you're about to announce it on a podcast I think I might have mentioned it in the past before possibly but Ellis does know this what's my big issue why can't I touch I'll give you more Blue, metal handrails. Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's because you're somehow, like something out of a comic, like out of a Marvel comic, you're an electricity boy. I used to be banister boy, and you give off electric charges. It's a level of static electricity that I build up when I walk around means that I always give myself electric shocks on banisters, yeah, or handrails. It's a level of static electricity that you're like one of the Fantastic Four. It's not enough of it. allegedly sort of killer man, but I could make maybe a light bulb lightly flicker if I held it.

If World War III kicks off, I'm sending you to the front line as electricity man. I'm just going to send you into no man's land. Watch this guy go. Attracting all the bullets towards me. What a martyr. Yes, that's true. It's because when I walk, I drag my feet and I charge myself up and then I, this is a doctor told me this. This is true. I went to see the doctor and he told me these things. And when I touch a rail, I always get electric shock. So I, conversely, Ellis, I go down the middle of the stairs without touching the sides and I'm just, you know, risk taker. That's why I am. Living on the edge. Wow. I charge myself up. Do you know what my wife does that increasingly we're coming

into conflict about? My wife, Sophie, will put stuff on the stairs to take up the stairs at a later point. But often I will be upstairs and come downstairs and there's a rug over a step or something like that? Is he does exactly the same. And it drives me insane. It's 10 stairs. It's 10 steps.

Also, what are you trying to do? You're trying to break my leg? It's so quick. Get up there. Get up there. About four months ago, I slipped on a banana skin on upstairs in what was the most cartoonish fall of my entire life. They generally are slippy.

My three-year-old eats bananas around the house and just leave the skins everywhere. And I hit a banana skin on the way down and just went fly. It's true. In the cartoons, the cartoons are right. They're very, very silly with banana skins. Man. Would you like some correspondence

to start this episode? I would, yes. Tremendous excitement in the inbox about the upcoming milk episode, which I can reveal. We'll be out in the new year. Tremendous excitement. We've had an email from Guy Fraser

who says he's got two milk facts he would like to share ahead. Fantastic. Are you ready for some milk facts? Absolutely. I am desperate to know what you make of this one, Ellis, and Tom. This is the first fact, he says, is from Guy Fraser. One of my best friends is a coffee trader and goes around the world buying and tasting coffee.

Is that your dream job, Elle? This is an incredible job. Oh, yeah, that sounds quite good. It would play havoc with the colour of my teeth. That isn't what I thought you were going to say, that to be honest. And I'm quite relieved. This friend, he says, maintains that Starbucks is. actually a milk trading company and sells and markets coffee merely as a way to ship loads of

its lovely, lovely milk. He says they're famously unfussy with the quality of the coffee bean they purchase because for them it's just a means to an end for selling milk. Discuss. So is he saying that they, are they milk producers? Yeah, well they've got to have their own source of milk. I suppose they do, yes. So they, yeah, you're right. So they must have cattle, they must have. So the milk is more important than the coffee bean

to Starbucks according to this source. I mean, that disgusts me. Coffee should be drunk black. Do you know what? Actually, now I was in New York a couple of weeks ago and I went to a Starbucks

and I ordered a flat white and they went, what size? Now, I'm new to coffee but I know that flat white is meant to be eight ounce. It's not meant to be much more than that, right? Yes, it's a small drink. I don't drink it, but yeah, it's not a...

You don't have a big one. So when they say flat, what size, you can have small, medium or grand. Obviously, they're just frying more milk in there. And what I'm saying is, I think this guy's... So maybe it's right. Yeah, this is under something. It's the kind of thing that, like, Naomi Klein would write about in No Logo, isn't it? Yeah.

Because when I read No Local, there were no... I'd never been in a Starbucks. And I read the book. And then about a week later, suddenly there were four in Cardiff. It was absolutely incredible. It was like magic. Well, do you remember this is a bit similar to that. email we got or that discussion point we had a while ago

that cinemas actually their profit is from pick and mix oh yeah you two snooted and sneered when I shared that you absolutely slammed you for about eight to ten minutes I was at the O2 last night and the O2 in my mind is obviously it started off as the Millennium Dorm but in my mind it's a music venue but there's pick and mix for sale yeah well you know the O2 is just basically it exists to sell pick and mix

They're booking Paul McCartney Because they know people come in And tuck into some prawn foams Do you want the second milk fact? Are you ready? Absolutely. You mentally prepared? Yeah, let's milk it.

Get a load of this. Louis Pasteur was the pioneering scientist Who discovered that heat got rid of micro-organisms in the 1860s. But the word... Is that pasteurized? Well, the word pasture from Middle English pasture, pastore, borrowed from the Anglo-N.

Norman Pasteur, Old French pasture, from Latin Pasteura, from the stem of Pasteur to feed Graze, was in play centuries before Louis Pasteur invented pasteurization. Good fact. Good milk fact. I thought it came from Louis Pasteur, pasteurized milk. Interesting. Did you? Yeah. Very good historical milk-based fact. Cows put out to pasture ages before the pasteurization of their milk was invented by Louis Pasteur. I think that's one of the silliest coincidental. I've ever heard up there with crap being used centuries before Thomas Crapper worked his magic of toilets. Love the show. Cheers. Are we suggesting that's nominative determinism that Louis Crapper?

Thomas Crapper. Thomas Crapper, Louis Crapper would be even more perfect than I, wouldn't it? You've got Lou in it and you've got crap. I'd hate to drink Louis Crapper's pasteurized milk. He only ended up in the toilet business because his name was calling for it. Is that what we're saying? There's a brilliant P.S. to this email from Guy. He says, P.S., I think I went to the same school as Tom, brackets, different years. But it was lovely to hear mention of the history teacher, Mr. Pratt, recently. He was hands down one of my favorite teachers. I remember him wheeling in one of the massive televisions on the last day of term and putting on the first half of the fugitive during the double period, but then stopping it to explain how Harrison Ford would never have survived that jump off. dam into the water and refuse to put it back on, a man of conviction.

Refused to put it back on. Fantastic. He was a very good man, a very good teacher. Yeah, that's very true. Hi. Anyway, nice to meet you, schoolmate. It was good. There you go. If you want to send in your emails for our correspondence section, here's how you can get in touch with the show. All right, you horrible look. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. you can email us at hello at oh what a time.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh what a time pod now clear off so this is a subscriber special

where we often do something a little bit different you guys have done book reviews mine is less different than a book review but it's somewhere it's probably the middle ground between a normal episode on your episodes. Okay, so I'm currently reading a book called The Wager by David Gran. Have you heard of this? No, not only you telling me about it. It is fantastic. It is so brilliant. It is a narrative, non-fiction tale which tells the story of a boat called the HMS Wager, which was a Royal Navy ship and a mutiny that took place after its wreckage in 1741. So it's, The question is whether this mutiny actually took place. I don't want to ruin it for people.

And also I can't really ruin it because I'm only a chapter in. So I don't really know what happens yet. Because I have two children who refuse to sleep. I'm always knackered, which means I will be reading this in three-minute increments over the next decade. But I can tell you I'm really enjoying it. It's a really, really good book. Well, Craig, I think it's worth sharing at this point. You do have a reputation for starting books and not finishing them.

What percentage of books would you say you start and finish? I would say I start and finish 30% of books. That's okay. I think there's a further 40%. I don't intend to finish, and not finish rather. I just put them somewhere and I can't find them again. So I don't know where they've gone. And then there's a final 30% or whatever where I'm thinking this isn't for me.

Yeah. I'm out. However, I can tell already that the wager by David Grant, is superb, is definitely a book I'm going to stick with. But it's got me thinking, that's what I'm going to talk to you about a day, because I think it's just fascinating, what life was like for a Royal Navy sailor

in the 18th century. Okay, so is this research you've conducted yourself? Yes, this is, yeah, yeah. But I'm afraid, Tom, you've broken the terms of your contract and you're sacked. Really nice to work with you. Yeah, it's been a real joy, yeah. Yeah, you're a good bloke, mate,

but I'm afraid that's, you know, It's rules of rules. Oh, and I'll go and join the Navy myself. It's the perfect to Noon to this story. So I thought basically our impressions of what life is like at sea in the 18th century, how real are they? How truthful are they? And more specifically to the life of a Royal Navy sailor.

So I've been researching this, looking into it, and I'm going to take you through the different aspects of life as an 18th century sailor. And I want you to tell me how you take to all of this. How does that sound? Are you happy with that for an episode? Yes, sold. Okay. I think we can agree for a start that the general narrative is that a life at sea at that time was horrific. For example, the English writer Samuel Johnson famously said, I love this quote. No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough, who basically means he has the will to get himself into jail.

So no man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail for being in a ship is being in jail with the child. of being ground, which is quite a nice description. So he was saying it was as awful as life in jail, but the added danger that you're on the ocean and could drown. So that to his mind, he's nailed it there. Absolutely. That there was no joy in this. This is not a life you'd want to pursue.

But there are question marks over whether that was true all the time. So I'll step me through the different aspects of this. And I want your take, okay? First of all, joining up, getting people to join the Navy in the 18th century was really hard because it felt like a very dangerous job. And in fact, joining the Navy in the 18th century was not often a voluntary act because of this. So this is due to the possibility of drowning, dying of disease, being blown up by a cannonball, all this sort of stuff, which meant that the Navy, the English Royal Navy, often found itself short staff.

And to deal with this, they'd use something called the press gang. Now, we've talked about this before. Are you aware of the press gang? No. The press gang was a group of Navy officers who were sent ashore to physically force people into a life at sea.

They'd threaten them in pubs. They'd knock them unconscious. They'd grab them from the street. They'd grab them from their own beds and they'd force them into service. And all of this was legal and it was based on the Crown's right to call on men for military service.

So picture the scene, okay, you're on a night out in a coastal town. It was completely within the law for Royal Navy's service. soldiers to come up to you, grab you and go, you are joining the Navy. You have no, you are not allowed to say no. You have to bribe your way out of it and be rich enough to do so. Yeah, horrific.

So talk me through that. How are you feeling? Because that's the term is that, you know, like, oh, I've been press ganged into cooking Christmas dinner this year. Exactly, yeah. Okay. Whereas this literally, where you've been pressed ganged to a life at sea in war. And this would often have happened, like, you would just be out with your friends in the pubs.

At this point. I am pointing out that I don't like rum and then I get stress-related eczema so I'm not really suitable for a life of sea kind of more of a thinker really than a sort of than an evil man. That term press gang has quite fond memories for me thinking of the kids TV show star Dexter Fletcher

Yes and Julius Swarler But now when I think of press gang I'm going to just be thinking about getting bundled out of a pub and like heading off to war on a shit Yeah. I'm thinking I'm moving to an inland town. That's what I'm doing. If I'm living on the coast and I'm seeing this happening with regularity, I've already lost four of my best mates to the sea during a night out on a stag two. Fifty percent of the stag two is now working in the Navy. It's not going to happen in Tamworth, is it? Exactly, yeah, yeah. I'm moving to Birmingham. Miles from the coast. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Which meant, because of this, numbers of sailors, like huge numbers of sailors serving in the army who'd been forced into it were desperate. not to be there. This is kind of the feeling because they were literally just going about their lives and suddenly they've been forced into a life at sea, which led to desertions. Now, how's this

for a stat? In 1803, there's a report on reforming the Navy. Lord Horatio Nelson noted that in the previous decade from 1803, for a decade before that, there had been 42,000 desertions from the Royal Navy. This is how desperate people were to get away from the job. Would you like to briefly guess how the Navy stopped these press gang people from running away when they reach port. I know that in wars, armies tend to just shoot people who desert. Like, that's one. That was Napoleon's tactic. They did not shoot people, no, it wasn't that.

Go off their families? They would shackle you. So when you reach port, you would be shackled and left on the ship so that you couldn't get off. And then when they go out to sea again, you'd be unshackled and you'd have to just work again on a boat. If I'd been pressed ganged into joining the Royal Navy, just because I live in a seaside town, there's no proof that I'm going to be good in the Navy. Yeah, absolutely. And it must be such a pain in the ass for all the hardened sailors who love it.

They were like, oh, God, this idiot from bloody, from Cornwall, just because he lives in a seaside town, he's now in the Navy. Well, interestingly, Ellis, I have an answer to you on that. There was an acceptance from the Navy that there would be a certain percentage of unskilled, basically clueless workers. who would water down the talent pool. But they wanted a certain percentage of people who would just carry stuff around,

carry gunpowder, all this sort of stuff. And they were okay with these people basically being useless, but just being an extra pair of hands. I mean, I can do that. Yes, exactly. So you would still have a use. You wouldn't be let off the boat.

You couldn't say, I'm useless. They'd go, it's fine. Well, you can just carry these munitions around. That's all we needed to do. So that's getting signed up. That's bad enough. We set off. The next thing I want to talk about is food.

Okay, so food at sea. It's a crucial thing for your experience when you're away from months on end is what you're eating. It has such an impact on your happiness, your health and how you are able to work and to operate, basically. Ships would set off with fresh fruit and produce, but would only have to be a few days out of port for all this fresh food to start to go off. Okay, this was due to a lack of ventilation, poor drainage and the presence of rats and other vermin on board. Okay. So there was basically this initial few days of quite happy feasting, and then everything starts to go off, okay? From then on, after everything's gone off, your only option is really a salted meat, hard biscuit, cheese, which is a bit dubious itself, and sauerkraut. Sourcrowt was a thing they used to bring on board a lot of sourcrow. Can I offer some of another Chris Skull's misplaced confidence on a thing? Yeah. I've always heard about rats on ships and rats being upon ships. How hard is it to get rid of the rats on the ships?

It can't be that hard. Right. Surely, once you're out of port, you're out at sea. Yes. There's got to be a finite amount of rats on the ship that you can get. They're not infinite source of rats on board. They do breed quickly. Yeah.

And every time you pull up at port, more rats are getting on. But it's not. Yeah, true. They're sat there with their passports. Yeah, I'm imagining a little bridge. You just need 30 cats, don't you? Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. But cats are scared of the water, Ellis. There's a problem. Yeah, we'll stay on the boat then. Yeah, that's always bothered me that. I remember reading about that in primary school there was a lot of rats on these boats. You're like, how hard is it to get rid of them?

Yeah, well, remember Edis? Alexander Selkirk, he trained the local cats to get rid of the rats, didn't he? Remember that guy? I think about him every day. Yeah. I'll probably think about him on my desk bed. When I went to Norfolk with the family a few months ago,

I went to an Alexander Selkirk theme pitch and puck course, which didn't feel like a befitting enough celebration of a man who'd survive five years on an island alone, or it was. I would find it almost impossible to catch her out with my bare hands. Yeah. But I know what you mean, Chris. Where is it hiding? Under the floorboards is the ocean, so we can't go there.

I don't think they're doing much hiding, are they? They're just out in public. They're on the deck, sunbathing. Yeah, they're sort of confident little bastards, rats in my experience. There'd be these days of fecing, there'd be mangoes and all these sort of stuff, whatever happened, they picked up in port, but then that would go off and you'd be back to the dried meat, the hard biscuit and the sourcrow. However, this is interesting.

So you have this initial reaction. That sounds awful that they had to eat that food. Actually, ships captains in the Navy were aware that food was a primary concern for the crew, so did ensure that they were well fed. So enlisted soldiers got 5,000 calories a day in rations. Wow. It's far more than people would have been eating in the army or in land. In the army, for example, you'd be getting 2,000 calories a day.

So you've got much more than you would have if you'd lived on shore. Also, dinner time was kept sacred. Men only called away from the mess table in emergencies. They were allowed 90 minutes to eat. So they really allowed time. Oh, that sounds all right. Yeah, so they really did try to preserve this. And they were taking on more protein than they would of back home.

Some captains, this is quite sweet, kept gardens on shore along their assigned cruising lanes to supply the crew with fresh veg. So wherever they knew they were going to go around the world each time they went on their trips, they were pull in. to their allotment, or massive allotment, I suppose, and then they would bring the veg and bring them on board, and then people would eat those. They also had drink assigned to them every day. What drink do you think they were assigned to? Rum.

Rum sometimes, but mainly it was a gallon of beer per sailor per day. Galen. Wow. How much is a gallon? How many pints in a gallon? Yeah, have a look at that. Eight points. Eight pints a day. There you go.

So they had eight pints a day of beer that they would drink, which was better than the drinking water as the brewing killed off dangerous microbes, although it did mean, for obvious reasons, that the sailors were tipsy throughout the day, doing quite dangerous jobs, but they were just constantly quite drunk. It was slightly watered down beer,

but everyone was a bit pissed, which is quite scary when there's cannons, and there's gunpowder and all these things involved. I tell you what, two nights ago I had four pints. I am still rough. And you woke up in your own bed. Yeah, I'm not saying. I've probably got a muck delivery.

No rats. Not in the middle of the Atlantic. No rats. Exactly, yeah. The rum ration was a daily amount of rum given to sailors on Royal Navy ships and it wasn't abolished until 1970. Yes.

That's amazing. The daily tot. That's what they used to call it. There's an interesting fact about that. I think it's that basically there was a fear that the rum was being watered down and to test that, they would pour it on ships rope,

and try and set it at light. And if it caught a light, it meant the alcohol level was enough. And that's where the word proof comes from. For an alcohol being proof, they weren't being sold a lie by the captains. Talking of the captains and the officers, they had their own cooks and their own supplies,

and they ate much better, which must have been quite annoying having those smells sort of wafting through as you're eating. Sourcrow again for the fifth week on a row. Another thing about life at sea in the 18th century, of course, punishment. Okay, let's see how you feel about punishment. Keeping the crew in order was vital

for morale for the safety of the ship. And in truth, naval discipline was sort of less severe as sailors were such a scarce and valuable resource that captains didn't want to kill them or waste them, basically. Once again comes to you, Ellis, saying the idea you can say, I'm rubbish, I want to leave. There was such scarcity in terms of the workforce. They just wouldn't risk killing anyone, really, for the main part, or letting anyone leave. But that said, when it was carried out, it could be quite brutal. There was the catar nine tails, obviously, which is a whip with nine ends. No.

You'd be whipped with for major punishments. There was a situation where your rum ration could be stopped, which sounds like nothing, but actually was psychologically a huge worry for people on board. And that really would help to keep people in line. Formal punishments such as the Captain Iron Tail were always carried out publicly in front of the other crew. The crew would be gathered on deck and they'd be forced to watch. And some punishments were actually handed out by the crew themselves, like thieves were forced to run the gauntlet, as it was described. Which is where the shipmates would hit them with rope ends as they run from one end of the ship to the other and be hit by the entire crew.

Let's talk about that. How are you feeling about those, those sort of potential admonishments? It's the recovery time as well. Because you've done something wrong. You've been caught for it. You're, I don't know, whip with a cat of nine tails. You're not like, all right, then, but I get back to work. You're going to be in agony for weeks, probably.

You're not going to be treated properly. The wound might become infected. Also, you're on a ship. But don't forget, Ellis. You're on eight points a day. You haven't. But you can't have a duvet day. Can you know, that's the problem.

Well, the captains in the Royal Navy said that one of the great advantages of the cat of nine times, was that crew could be back working pretty much immediately. So they saw it as something that you could do which would not break a bone but were caused pain but not enough that they couldn't be straight back doing their job within minutes afterwards. It's such an interesting point, isn't it? You've got a physical punishment,

but you want people to go back to work in what is one of the most strenuous labour-intensive jobs, I can imagine. Absolutely, yeah, completely. There were some extreme ones, though. So if Cat and Nine-Tales feels pretty bad, there were a couple of things. things that were worse than that, okay? The worst was something called being keel-hauled.

Do you know what keel-hauling is? No. Is that where they throw you off the back on a rope for a bit? Yes, it's worse than that, really. Oh, yes, yes. You would be tarred and feathered. Fine. You would then be, you think that's enough, wouldn't you?

Yeah, I'm fine. Yeah. If I done something wrong at work and they tar and feather me, I'm thinking this surely has to be the end. This is it, isn't it? This is where it ends. I've got to be honest, Tom. But it must be a bad joke you've written.

If you've been tarred and feathered, Brit. I would love to read that link for Josh Whittaker, New Britain. Is that bad? What the hell is this? Heating up the tar in front of me. I haven't even finished a setup. He's got no faith in it. So, tarred and feathered, you're tied to a rope,

and then you're pushed over the boat, you're pulled under the keel of the boat, and then up the other side. The idea being, A, that you have to hold your breath when you're going underneath the boat and the barnacles attached to the hull would lacerate your skin as you went underneath.

Although that wasn't much of an issue for many people because a lot of people just drowned during the key hauling. So the lacerating of the skin was a secondary issue to the fact that they died. Oh, rubbish.

A final punishment relates to falling asleep on watch and was carried out, for example, on the HMS Richmond. If you fed asleep on your watch, you were slung into a covered basket below the bowel sprit which is you know in the front of an old boat

there's like an almost like a wooden lady prong that comes out and yeah exactly it comes out from the very front so you would be placed in a basket and then placed below the nose of the boat and within this prison you were given a loaf of bed a mug some ale

and a sharp knife an armed sentry would ensure that you could not return to board if you managed to escape from the basket and you had two alternatives to basically starve to death or cut yourself adrift and drown at sea. That were your options. But falling asleep on watch.

So they left it up to you how you wanted to end. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. This is a very extreme situation. So why are they giving you bread just so you could eat something before you die? Yeah, exactly, yeah. I don't know. Just to drag it out. But falling asleep, obviously, could be incredibly dangerous,

could lead to the death of hundreds of crew members. So I suppose it was seen as a very important thing to stop. which leads us neatly, actually, to our final thing. This is about sleep on board. I think this is kind of an interesting one. So prior to the invention of gas and electric lighting in towns and home, human circadian rhythms were synchronized basically to a world without artificial light pollution.

So before the time where we could flick on a switch and we'd have light in the home, our rhythms were just set up to suit the darkening of the day in nighttime. That's all it really happened. So normally, for example, people would go to bed around dusk, they then wake in the middle of the night to eat, sew, read, and then they'd sleep for a few hours more until dawn, okay? Yes, I've always thought that sounds quite nice, actually,

or maybe smoky, smokey pipe. Absolutely. Well, you like this as well, Ellis. During the short nights and long days of summer, when there was less sleep at night, they'd also supplement that with catnaps during the day. So it was just accepted practice that people would go and have a sleep at a couple of points during the day

to make up to the fact they weren't sleeping much during the night because you only slept when it was dark. But when were they doing? podcasts. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So in the 18th century, the Royal Navy based its watch schedule to reflect the sleep habits of this era. Sailors never slept for more than four hours at time, but they still got better rest than those on land, which is quite interesting. So your average sailor, for example, this gives you context of why it was better to sleep on a ship than it was on land. And further evidence that actually there were some advantages being at sea. Your

Aravary Sailor came from a humble rural background or a poorer part of the large city. He probably lived on land in a single occupancy dwelling, probably noisy and cramped. If they had a bed, it was no doubt shared by at least two or three siblings or most likely your whole family. How are you feeling about that? You enjoying that? Your whole family in the bed. It was made with cheap straw. That's my son's dream.

You would love that. Infested with bedbugs and mites, all made a straw. That's the best case scenario. It was far more likely that your bed was just an old flower sack on the floor, which was then covered in straw or heather. And then often to provide some heat to the room, the family's cow or pig would be in the cottage with you because the body heat was useful on winter nights.

You're imagining it's a whole family in a bed, which is covered in mites and ticks and fleas. You've got a cow and a pig sleeping next to you just because it exudes a little bit of heat. If the dwelling was heated with a peat fire, the air would be thick and smoky. And in towns... You'd never sleep. No, not at all.

Well, it's even worse in towns, Ellis. Because in towns, the thin timber structures were so close, and they were all built around courtyards for the main part. It basically all acted as an echo chamber to any noise. You're constantly hearing the noise of people throughout the night. So sleep was just terrible, really, for most working people on land. I reckon I had about three hours sleep last night. I came home from a gig.

I'd been asked to sleep in Betty's room, my daughter. She had a cold. She woke up at 2 a.m. So she woke me up. She was sniffling then until about 4 a.m. When eventually she fell asleep. Then I thought, do you know what? I'm going to go and sleep in the attic.

She's asleep. Got in the attic. I can't close the door, the attic, so the cats came in. The cat was on my head. It was on my back. Then the other one did the same thing. It's now like half past six. So I've been awake now for four and a half hours.

Yeah. I think I eventually let the cat out or fed it. I can't even remember. And then the cat left me alone, and then my son woke up. And I'm not at my best. I look like I've been dredged out of a canal. But if this was every day... So may I recommend to you, Ellis,

the life of a Royal Navy sailor in the 18th century? If you're getting no sleep now, this might have been an improvement. A sailor had 28 inches of space to themselves on their hammock. 28 inches. But compared to what they were enjoying, At home, in a family bed, actually far better. Domesticated animals on board were kept away in a manger.

Yeah, sounds good. They were able to, absolutely. They were able to open the gun ports to let fresh air in, which was far more ventilation than you get in a rural cottage. It was often filled with smoke. Also, let's admitly a relief, as most sailors were superstitious and believe it was unlucky to bathe while you were at sea. So a lot of them just didn't bathe the entire journey because they didn't see it as lucky.

And finally, Masters, at arms would patrol the deck making sure that there was no crime or at least crime was kept to a minimum which is a reassurance you would never find they sound like swats yeah absolutely a reassurance you'd never find

living in a city so like in London for example it was just crime was rife and your home was only so secure so you lie there thinking oh no someone's going to break and that was a genuine fear of that constantly yes that sounds terrible isn't it

so whereas these people could sleep easy that they wouldn't be the victim of crime They had their own space. They're in a hammock. The ships were kept very clean because once again, this is all about order and control and all these things actually do have a benefit

when it comes to this sort of thing. Horrific in terms of you being keyhole, etc. But if you want a clean bed, Tom, sign me up. I'm joining the Navy. Hello at the Royal Navy.com. I'm ready. I'm willing.

So that's what's kind of interesting about this, is that it's obviously pretty horrific, but as with so many things in history, you have to take it in the context of the time. So, like, obviously it sounds awful to be having only 18-inch movement in your hammock and having to get up every four hours to, you know, what it happens to be, or eating this dried meat.

But for a lot of people on land during the 18th century, there was no protein in your diet. People pay good money for built-on. Exactly. It's the same thing, isn't it? Weight lifters like it. Exactly. Sourcrow is now very hip.

Very healthy and hip. They all would have had great gut health, from what I understand. Exactly, yeah, yeah. Sign me up. And if they weren't then killed age 22 by a cannon, decapitated, then it would be useful to them. I've just started this book. It's called The Wager by David Gran.

I've only just started it. I'm absolutely loving it. But it just made me think, what an exciting world this is and what an interesting thing. And I was wondering whether my perceptions of it were fair. So I think it's got to be as a mixed bag. Some better than I thought, some worse. How did you hear about the book in the first place?

I went into a bookshop and I found the front cover arresting Oh, old school, okay I'm a browser when it comes to that sort of stuff I like to read, yeah But it's a very good book It's beautifully written, real pace And it's absolutely fascinating

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