Long-distance ships grow fresh vegetables

[Melvin Loh]

How poss would it have been for seagoing vessels pre-Captain Cook to have developed their own onboard gardens specially to grow fresh vegetables- as the Ming Dynasty great treasure ships did ? How much would the issues related to scurvy have been addressed ?

 

[bobbis14]

How poss would it have been for seagoing vessels pre-Captain Cook to have developed their own onboard gardens specially to grow fresh vegetables- as the Ming Dynasty great treasure ships did ? How much would the issues related to scurvy have been addressed ?

I'm not to sure but I think the use of salt as a preservative is pretty widespread by this point so I do question a need for it; along with use of Rum in water for preservation.

 

[Berra]

I think it would take up a lot of space and the water might alos be a problem, the water around is salt.

 

[xchen08]

Yeah, I think fresh water is the big stumbling point, which makes pickled vegetables a better bet. Are there any vegetables that can be irrigated in saltwater? There are a few species of seaweed I believe, that are rich in vitamin C.

 

[carlton_bach]

There is the odd species of edible seaweed that flourishes in salt water, but in the end, gardening on shipboard is not really an option without considerable resources expended. Even with soybeans, I doubt the Chinese did it as frequently as is sometimes suggested, and European ships tended to have less available space. Add to that the fact that European dieticians thought of vegetables and fruit as a luxury and you can see how the concept would have a difficult start. By the time the need for veg was understood fully, ships were fast enough that fresh produce usually lasted from departure to arrival.

If you can finagle an earlier understanding of the link between fresh vegetables of some description and scurvy earlier, we might see more efforts to make it work. It'll probably still be limited to navy ships and Company Indiamen, though.

Ediut: How about the idea that scurvy is caused by absence of the 'vital principle' (it afflicts people at sea, in the desert and in winter, away from fresh plants and growing things). As a result, efforts are made to preserve the vital principle, and while it is found that young animals and fish will not help, it turns out that fresh plant shoots will. As a result, ships start carrying large amounts of chickpeas and (after Columbus) phaseoluis beamns that are periodically watered. The young shoots are eaten raw by the crew. They hate it, especially since on bean day, they have their water rations reduced, but it does them good.

It's technically about feasible given space constraints, it uses very little fres water (most of which is ingested with the plant) and it makes sense from a theoretical point of view in a way 'vitamins' or 'minerals' would not. Not exactly what we think of as gardening, though.

 

[Orioes]

Yeah, I think fresh water is the big stumbling point, which makes pickled vegetables a better bet. Are there any vegetables that can be irrigated in saltwater? There are a few species of seaweed I believe, that are rich in vitamin C.

Seaberry is fairly resistant to salt water and produces Vitamin C and other nutrient rich fruit but I wonder where you are going to put these plants. They are going to take a fair amount of deck space and you can't exactly stuff them in the hold.

 

[proximefactum]

There is the odd species of edible seaweed that flourishes in salt water, but in the end, gardening on shipboard is not really an option without considerable resources expended. Even with soybeans, I doubt the Chinese did it as frequently as is sometimes suggested, and European ships tended to have less available space.

As a result, ships start carrying large amounts of chickpeas and (after Columbus) phaseoluis beamns that are periodically watered. The young shoots are eaten raw by the crew. They hate it, especially since on bean day, they have their water rations reduced, but it does them good.

It's technically about feasible given space constraints, it uses very little fres water (most of which is ingested with the plant) and it makes sense from a theoretical point of view in a way 'vitamins' or 'minerals' would not. Not exactly what we think of as gardening, though.

At the time of Captain Cook, at least, barreled freshwater taken aboard ships tended to putrefy quite quickly (algae growth). So it's likely that this precious little water, generally unfit for human consumption, would need to be split between irrigation and human consumption (relatively less, since most sailors drank weak ale rather than water).

So if these beansprouts are antiscourbic, and could be irrigated by fouled water, than perhaps it would provide the vitamin C desperately needed by sailors. But there is another catch: how could sodden, overworked, and generally non-fertile soil grow these plants? Would it be possible to grow these beans hydroponically? I'm thinking of the Aztec chiampas, or floating islands of the Aztecs that yielded hydroponically grown plants. Perhaps there would be a way to use low-irrigation hydroponic techniques to yield these sprouts. Yet the competition between human freshwater consumption and irrigation needs would likely render this an impossible feat.

Why was desalinzation so difficult in the early modern era? Was it time-intensive and therefore a drain on manpower? If desalinzation were perfected in the 17th or 18th century, then perhaps there would be more innovation in irrigation and safe human water consumption. But I am surprised that efficient and large scale desalinzation was not available sooner than the past century or two.

 

[Fellatio Nelson]

How poss would it have been for seagoing vessels pre-Captain Cook to have developed their own onboard gardens specially to grow fresh vegetables- as the Ming Dynasty great treasure ships did ? How much would the issues related to scurvy have been addressed ?

Well, they often had a cow or goat or three on bigger ships to provide fresh milk (at least for the officers), doubtless also chickens too.

But the big thing is knowledge about vitamins and malnutritution - I know they were aware that people got scurvy, but it took some time to work out what seemed to prevent it (I believe Captain Cook tried sauerkraut).

If one can prevent scurvy by issuing lime juice, and sailors generally ate better than their landsmen counterparts, why have the trouble of turning the deckspace - needed to sails, guns or cargo - into a golf course?

 

[carlton_bach]

At the time of Captain Cook, at least, barreled freshwater taken aboard ships tended to putrefy quite quickly (algae growth). So it's likely that this precious little water, generally unfit for human consumption, would need to be split between irrigation and human consumption (relatively less, since most sailors drank weak ale rather than water).

So if these beansprouts are antiscourbic, and could be irrigated by fouled water, than perhaps it would provide the vitamin C desperately needed by sailors. But there is another catch: how could sodden, overworked, and generally non-fertile soil grow these plants? Would it be possible to grow these beans hydroponically? I'm thinking of the Aztec chiampas, or floating islands of the Aztecs that yielded hydroponically grown plants. Perhaps there would be a way to use low-irrigation hydroponic techniques to yield these sprouts. Yet the competition between human freshwater consumption and irrigation needs would likely render this an impossible feat.

Bean sprouts grow if you moisten beans - no soil is needed. They die without soil in a few days, but that's the stage you eat them at anyway. These days I think this is mostly done wioth soybeans and mung beans, but you can also do it with other varieties. the problem with my idea is that to contemporary European, a sprouting bean meant that it was spoiled. Beans for storage were often heat-treated to prevent them from germinating. Someone would need to figure out a) that this works and b) what it is good for. That's the unlikely part.

Why was desalinzation so difficult in the early modern era? Was it time-intensive and therefore a drain on manpower? If desalinzation were perfected in the 17th or 18th century, then perhaps there would be more innovation in irrigation and safe human water consumption. But I am surprised that efficient and large scale desalinzation was not available sooner than the past century or two.

Energy, basically. As a phenomenon, deslinisation has been understood since at least classical Greece, but it required completely evaporating the water. Even with the most efficient methods used before the 19th century, the fuel requirememnt were out of all proportion to the effect, not to mention the space that a sufficiently large desalinisation plant would take up and the fire hazard it would pose.

Even today, with much better insulatio and efficient evaporation technology, desalinisation on a large scale on shipboard only makes sense if mission time is critical and surplus energy is available in quantity. For most vessels, it's still cheaper to carry water.