The important role played by the Dover Victualling Office in keeping Royal Navy sailors supplied with beer at sea was the subject of a fascinating talk in the Dover Museum cinema last Wednesday 21 February by naval historian Andy Plumbly.

A hardy audience, who braved stormy conditions to attend, learnt that in the 18th century it was beer, not rum that was the staple drink of the Royal Navy. Water was not usually drunk away from land, due to it quickly turning bad and its propensity to spread diseases such as typhoid.

The quality of beer on board ship had long been criticised. Admiral Hawke, Commander in Chief of the Western Squadron wrote in 1747...

Most of the ships in my squadron have had the best part of their beer condemned as sour and stinking

And again in 1759 while at sea off Brest...

the beer brewed at your port is so excessively bad that it employs the whole time of the squadron surveying it and throwing it overboard

The Victualling Board attempted to remedy this by imposing strict specifications for the brewing of beer, with most of it produced in its own brewhouses, under the supervision of master brewers.

The beer ration was somewhat confusingly a wine gallon a day, an impressive 6.6 pints in today's measures, which was drunk regularly by sailors in between their duties. Recent brewing experiments have shown its strength was roughly 3% by volume, suggesting most Georgian sailors were somewhat inebriated at the end of a long working day.

Dover was the smallest Royal Navy victualling yard to have a brewhouse. It was built on the site of the former medieval Maison Dieu pilgrim hospital and incorporated many of its buildings. The whole operation, which also included baking ships biscuit and making salt pork and beef, was overseen by an Agent Victualler who lived in a fine brick-built house next door. Constructed in 1665, it is now the home of Dover Town Council. There is a fine portrait of Michael Russell, one of the late 18^th century Agent Victuallers in the Dover Museum collection.

Despite its small size, in 1700 the Dover naval brewhouse, supplied roughly a sixth of the beer drunk by Royal Navy sailors. It was also the one in longest continuous operation. Peak production at Dover came in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with a maximum annual output in 1779 of just under 4000 large casks called tuns (containing 864,000 gallons). Impressive volumes of beer also supplied the sailors of Nelson's navy during the Napoleonic Wars, particularly in the 1790s and again around the time of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The casks were made in an onsite cooperage. Andy's meticulous research has revealed that from the late 17th to the early 19th century, the Dover brewhouse supplied the navy with an estimated 26 million gallons of beer!

This was carted in casks strengthened with iron hoops, to the Victualling Quay at Dover Harbour. Here it was taken on board small boats called victualling hoys, before being loaded into Royal Navy warships in the Downs, the sheltered anchorage off Deal. A watercolour A First Rate taking in Stores by J M W Turner, shows this operation in progress, with a tiny hoy moored alongside, dwarfed by a huge three-deck warship, similar to Nelson's HMS Victory. Smaller casks could be loaded through the lower gunports, whereas larger ones had to be craned on deck.

Records relating to the Dover brewhouse are frustratingly few, but Andy's research has revealed tantalising fragments of evidence, that help build a picture of life at the yard which in the mid-1700s employed 69 men. These include the 1784 appointment of a Master Brewer; that in 1789 the quality of Dover beer was vindicated by the Master Brewer from London; and that in 1804, its horse-engine was retained. Horses were regularly employed to turn machinery, possibly in this case to pump up clean water needed for brewing, from aquifers bored deep into the chalk. It has also revealed details of local men who supplied key ingredients, including Phineas Stringer who supplied malt between 1743 and 1757.

Shortly after the closure of the Dover Victualling Office in 1825, the naval beer supply was abolished. This happened in January 1831, when it was replaced with spirits, mainly rum. According to Andy, this was at exactly the wrong time, when the inability of being able to brew in the summer, a constant issue, was about to be solved by refrigeration. A large purpose-built brewery at the Royal William Victualling Yard, Plymouth which had just been completed, was never used.

Finally, Andy recounted some amusing methods employed by 18th century brewers to test the strength of beer... which included pouring it onto a seat and sitting on it. If you stuck to the seat, it was ready!

After the talk, a happy crowd sought out a Dover pub to continue discussions.

Our thanks and best wishes to Andy Plumbly, who is a looking to complete his PhD about the Royal Navy beer supply in the 18th century, at King’s College London, later this year. We look forward to seeing him again in Dover very soon.

Martin Crowther
Engagement Officer
Maison Dieu