Food on the Ship

Transcription

Food on the ship

When we were at port, the food…we had three good cooks, very good cooks and . . . when we were in port we had fresh food, we ate very well. But only one week after setting off, the food was . . . they cooked what there was left. Powdered eggs was something we ate a lot of. But the worst was when we got to Ireland. The food that they put on board wasn't very good. They put lamb on board, and the lamb was black with yellow and orange stripes. It wasn't too appetizing. And I've never eaten lamb since; I can't stand it!

We want bread!

At Portsmouth, we were at quarters next to some ships, a group of Canadian ships that had arrived from Canada. The cooks swapped food with them and we got some chicken. Boy, that smelled good! And we had an understanding with the cooks before we went out, and after three days we never had any bread. We wondered why . . . they wondered why we didn't have any bread. We asked the steward to buy flour to make bread. He didn't want to, because he said that he didn't have the money for that [laughter]. So, we all got together, we all chipped in, and we gave money to the cook; the cook bought flour and all that was required, and we set off with that. And after the third, fourth day, when we started to run out of bread, they made bread. But the bread was for us guys in the mess where there were telegraph operators and the signalmen and those guys were. But smells travel in ships; it doesn't take long. And the captain smelled it, and when it was time to eat, there was no bread. He wondered where the bread was, so he went to see the cook. So the cook says, "The bread I'm baking is for those guys; they bought the stuff." "Why can’t we get some?" "Well,” he said, “Speak to the steward." On the next trip, we always had flour, and we [laughter], we always had bread! [laughter]. Oh, and that smelled good, you know, on calm days, you could smell it from far away.