Cutlass Rat Business

Message:

Midshipmen and unrated seamen supplemented their diet with rat and did not want to compete with cats

Once survey was discovered to be a nutritional deficiency, there was a gradual push to improve the sailor’s diet until rats were no longer needed as a supplement

The UK couldn’t afford to do this until after the Napoleonic war

Fun fact:

Unlike humans, rats make their own vitamin C

Seamen who ate rats didn’t get scurvy

Rats were seen as beneath officers and ratings but not seamen and midshipmen, who often kept them and fed them up on hardtack crumbs before eating them

They did not get scurvy

This was attributed to their young age, although even the old seamen with a taste for rat were protected

It was CaptainCook and his well-known care and compassion for his men who demonstrated that vitamin C, specifically , pickled cabbage, prevented scurvy

Yours,