Animal Bones
Most of the bones recovered from the Whydah wreck-site can be associated with meat, whether fresh or preserved, carried for consumption aboard ship.
Livestock such as chickens, goats, sheep, pigs and even cows were brought aboard ship to be slaughtered for food. It was both risky and impractical, however, to rely on these as provisions for an entire voyage.
Before refrigeration, the best way to preserve meat for consumption at sea was by packing the quarters (only the heads, hooves, hocks and large marrow bones were removed) in a very strong salt brine, or "pickle", to keep the meat from rotting. The brine was so strong that if the meat were kept too long "in cask", it could become hard enough to carve into buttons and had to be ground through a nutmeg grater, and eaten as a hash.
While the Royal Navy generally discarded meat which had been in cask more than two years, a piece of beef or pork might well be over six years old by the time it reached a merchant sailor's plate.
Soaked at least half a day and then boiled at least an hour and a half to be rendered edible, it arrived as a leathery mass of sodden fibers known as "salt junk"--a term otherwise reserved for an old worn-out piece of rope. The fibrous texture was accented when salt pork was on the menu--as it was generally boiled in its own bristles.
As knife-marks on recovered pewter plates suggest, salt junk was still very tough in the best of circumstances. Most sailors were forced to give up the sea by their early forties simply because a toothless seaman risked starvation.
Vertebra (A#70337)
Rib (A#11870)
Rib (A#11905)
