Livestock
Clipper
ships had to store a lot of food since their trips involved being at sea with
no way to get new provisions for 4 or more months at a time. A lot of the food was in the form of
livestock. For example, one of the
passengers on the Flying CloudÕs first voyage wrote the following about the
livestock on board in her diary:
"You don't know how odd it seems of a morning when
comfortably seated in my rocking chair on deck -- when gazing over the broad
ocean, to hear roosters crowing, hens cackling, turkeys gobbling, pigs grunting
and lambs bleating. There is an
immense amount of livestock on board and our icehouse is still well stocked
with provisions -- so no danger but we shall fare well enough let us ever so
long a voyage. We number, sailors
and all, seventy-eight -- quite a village" [1]
She also wrote
about the fourth of July dinner on board:
É I must name the goodies which crowd
our table. Roast turkey and
chicken with oyster sauce, roast pig, boiled ham, É[2]
Another Flying
Cloud passenger, on a different voyage, a writer named Charles William Stoddard,
recorded additional information about the livestock loaded onto the Flying
Cloud as follows:
"A list
of our live-stock: 17 pigs; 12 dozen hens and roosters; 3 turkeys; 1 gobbler; a
cockatoo and a wild-cat."[3]
He also noted that the passengers (and at least
some of the crew) had Òfresh
eggs for breakfast,
fresh pork for
dinner, fresh chicken for supperÓ and
noted that the chickens on board produced Òa dozen
to two dozen eggs per dayÓ[4]
The Flying Cloud carried multiple chicken
coops to house all those chickens and turkeys. This is confirmed by a letter from Dr. Stanley Coffin to
Margaret Lyon, on June 15, 1988 about an incident that happened on the Flying
CloudÕs first voyage: "The
Flying Cloud carried chicken coops to supply fresh meat for the voyage which
were, in fair weather, slung outboard over the gun'ls."[5] .
I have not found a source that shows the size or location of the Flying
CloudÕs chicken coops, but both the Cutty Sark and Charles W.
Morgan have chicken coops that are about 2.5Õ x 2.5Õ x 6Õ, so those coops
may be a model, but I have not found a source that says how much room one needs
for 12 dozen chickens plus a few turkeys.
Cutty Sark chicken
coop
There
would have had to have been a pen to hold the larger livestock, including the
pigs and lambs. The Boucher 1916 model in the Boston MFA includes a livestock
pen over the forward hatch but the pen does not seem big enough to hold 17 pigs
plus a lamb or two. No other
source shows a livestock pen but it is clear from the above that there must
have been one or more and it is hard to image that the livestock was kept for
long below deck due to the smell.
See Robert
LeslieÕs book Old Sea Wings É for a description of food and livestock
carried by sailing ships of the time.[6]