Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part One The General Organisation of Victualling the British Navy
- Part Two The Bases
- Part Three The Main Markets
- 8 Meat
- 9 Cereals and Pulses
- 10 The Remaining Sectors: Beverages, Butter and Cheese, Salt, Olive Oil and Raisins
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- Sources and Bibliography
- Index
- Other Works of Christian Buchet
10 - The Remaining Sectors: Beverages, Butter and Cheese, Salt, Olive Oil and Raisins
from Part Three - The Main Markets
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part One The General Organisation of Victualling the British Navy
- Part Two The Bases
- Part Three The Main Markets
- 8 Meat
- 9 Cereals and Pulses
- 10 The Remaining Sectors: Beverages, Butter and Cheese, Salt, Olive Oil and Raisins
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- Sources and Bibliography
- Index
- Other Works of Christian Buchet
Summary
Having examined homogeneous sectors such as meat, cereals and pulses, this final chapter will concentrate on a group of sectors which, although rather more disparate, was of no less importance. In fact, 104 merchants – as individuals or in associations – were involved in supplying the Navy with provisions of butter, beer, cheese, olive oil, raisins, salt, spirits and wine.
Supplying the Navy with Beverages
Beer
Very few contracts were drawn up for the provision of the various Navy yards with beer, and there is a logical explanation for this. During the War of the Austrian Succession and into the 1750s, the Navy made a special effort to construct and maintain breweries in its main ports (see Chapters 1 and 2). During the Seven Years War, according to the historian P. Mathias, it was therefore able to provide for three-quarters of its needs in beer. Mathias quotes a contemporary as noting that this allowed the Victualling Board
To provide most of the beer required by the Navy at a far less expense as well as in better quality than what is furnished in contracts; the Crown will also thereby be secured from the ill effects of combinations too frequently found among contractors where they have it in their power to make their own terms … the contract brewers never brewing but as the beer has been demanded so that in cases of emergency the Service has been at all times subject to delay and disappointments and especially in their brewing beer in the summer season.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The British Navy, Economy and Society in the Seven Years War , pp. 225 - 252Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013