LITTLE KNOWN NAVAL HISTORY
(Hard to believe if you calculate the per day consumption per crewman).

The U.S.S. Constitution (Old Ironsides) as a combat vessel carried 48,600 gallons of fresh water for her crew of 475 officers and men.
This was sufficient to last six months of sustained operations at sea. She carried no evaporators (fresh water distillers).

However, let it be noted that according to her log, "On July 27, 1798, the U.S.S. Constitution sailed from Boston with a full complement of 475 officers and men, 48,600 gallons of fresh water, 7,400 cannon shot, 11,600 pounds of black powder and 79,400 gallons of rum."

Her mission: "To destroy and harass English shipping."

Making Jamaica on 6 October, she took on 826 pounds of flour and 68,300 gallons of rum.

Then she headed for the Azores, arriving there 12 November. She provisioned with 550 pounds of beef and 64,300 gallons of Portuguese wine.

On 18 November, she set sail for England.

In the ensuing days she defeated five British men-of-war and captured and scuttled 12 English merchantmen, salvaging only the rum aboard each.

By 26 January, her powder and shot were exhausted. Nevertheless, and though unarmed, she made a night raid up the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. Her landing party captured a whiskey distillery and transferred 40,000 gallons of single malt Scotch aboard by dawn.

Then she headed home.

The U.S.S. Constitution arrived in Boston on 20 February 1799, with no cannon shot, no food, no powder, NO rum, NO wine, NO whiskey and 38,600 gallons of stagnant water.

GO NAVY!

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Sounds like they had good time... :D

Unbelievable....

I am gratified to see that our illustrious navy suceeded in capturing that strategically important Scottish distillery. Well done. With a navy like that you know you can sleep safely at night. ;)

although I hate to spoil the fun this probably is not as it looks.
Maybe they only used 10,000 gallons of water (that's about 0.1gallon/man/day)
BUT
I think that
the Rum and Wine were unloaded, sold or used for some other purposes then solely drinking fun of the crew.
I think so simply because drinking that much rum in that time is impossible.

If we're claiming that the crew of the Constitution drunk
79,400 gallons of rum
68,300 gallons of rum
64,300 gallons of wine
40,000 gallons of Scotch
and some rum from the English merchantmen

we get a per-day/per capita use of
more than 1.5 gallon rum
about 0.65 gallon wine
and 0.40 gallon Scotch

Now please note the facts that
a.) 1 liter of booze (40% alcohol) gives most grown men severe alcohol poisoning
b.) as rum and scotch hold about 40% alcohol and wine has about 10% the men would have consumed 0.6+0.065+0.16= 0.825 gallons = more than 3 litres of pure alcohol each day!!!
Shall I continue :D
The density of alcohol makes that about 2.5kg
Now the deadly dose for adults is 2-4g/kg bodyweight. So to survive this a sailor would have to weigh 625kg/1250lbs.
I can still go on ;)
So for all men to survive that the crew of the Constitution would have had a summarized weight of at least 295 tons.
And to finally prove my point -> That is about the wieght of a loaded 747 Jumbo [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

So apparently the Constitution was a really huge ship with a really huge crew who was nevertheless dead drunk all the time.

[ 09-06-2003, 07:59 PM: Message edited by: Faceman ]

A mental check on your maths looks OK. Of course the equation looks a little worse when it is declared that they arrived back with nothing (so how many days should we subtract when they were a dry ship?) and of course you wouldn't expect 100% of the crew to be pissheads either. That damned temperence movement always seems to affect some small fraction of the population :D .

Now your forgot to factor in any ports of call and wenches they might have plied with said alcohol ;)

I also did not take the rum from the merchantmen into account. This is just how much they must have drunk AT LEAST if they did really drink that all up by themselves.
And if some of the crew were abstinent the others would have needed to drink more therefore they'd have needed to be even bigger to survive giving us the exact same overall weight at then end ;)

[inhisbestruggedsailorvoice]
Arf... Faceman be a spoiler of fun...
[/inhisbestruggedsailorvoice]

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they could have perhaps not used all of the alcohol for drinking purposes
did they make a lot of molotov cocktails? dispose of a lot of the liquor to the sea? use it to fuel some sort of engine? use it for fire fuel like in an antique lamp?

course they coulda always did silly things...
like bathing in it (which would certainly cure the awful smell old sailors must have had!)