How Did Medieval/Middle Ages Seafarers Carry Enough Water To Explore
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Places where water waas slow moving or stagnant and surrounded by farmland with livestock (think much of Britain and Continental Europe) did consume more beer than fresh water because the alcohol in beer essentially purifies it making it safer. People bandy about figures like 'the average English peasant drank eight pints of beer a day! What a bunch of lushes.'
In reality, they were drinking a product called 'small beer' which was about 1-2% alcohol yet relatively high in calories and vitamins, being an unfiltered product.
In relatively unpolluted areas with widely scattered farms and lots of mountains and springs, fresh, potable water was drunk with a lot more frequency. Even today many hikers in Norway simply carry a cup with them instead of a canteen or other water bottle so they can dip in the nearest stream to drink.
ABQConvict
This is also why there's so much drinking of wine in the Bible! Wine was much safer than water in that crowded part of the world.
Whalers spent an incredible 2 years or more at sea, especially during the last of the whaling days, which lasted up until 1868. By that time whales had become scarce in the Atlantic, so whalers were sailing all the way around the cape to the Pacific and even up to the Pacific Arctic.
They never landed where there were people, but they would make a stop at Galapagos where they would fill barrels, but they also captured tortoises, and use the blood for nourishment. Sea turtles were also used in this manner.
Read this, which is the story of a whale sinking the whaleship Essex. The story was the inspiration for Moby Dick, which followed some years later.
Great question 6 foot 3. I often wondered that myself and also how the Polynesians traveled thousands of miles on little boats to places like Hawaii and had enough water to sustain them.
I just did a web search trying to find out how the Polynesians were thought to have carried enough water for their long migrations. Unfortunately I could not find a decent reference. There were references to the Polynesians carrying plants and domestic animals with them on their migration treks, but not how they carried enough water.
I can not imagine how the long outrigger canoes could carry the amount of water needed.
When i was in the Navy we had large distiller's onboard our ship that converted seawater to fresh water for us however i've always wondered about those early seafaring explorers ...
I was in the Royal Merchant Navy of the UK, and we had a reverse osmosis desalination plant on our ship as well.
Remember in modern times we consume so much more water - not for drinking purposes, but for washing, bathing, cooking, cleaning, laundry, flush toilets, etc.
Whalers spent an incredible 2 years or more at sea, especially during the last of the whaling days, which lasted up until 1868. By that time whales had become scarce in the Atlantic, so whalers were sailing all the way around the cape to the Pacific and even up to the Pacific Arctic. They never landed where there were people, but they would make a stop at Galapagos where they would fill barrels, but they also captured tortoises, and use the blood for nourishment. Sea turtles were also used in this manner.
Read this, which is the story of a whale sinking the whaleship Essex. The story was the inspiration for Moby Dick, which followed some years later.
Actually, In The Heart Of The Sea mentions numerous populated ports of call. After the blowdown that destroyed on of the boats, they managed to buy a new one somewhere (Azores? I forget.) and there is an extensive account of a stop at some city in, I believe, Chile (where one sailor left the ship).
The tortoises were useful because they did not need food or water for many months - they would just roam the whalers and could be eaten as needed, even six to nine months later, requiring no care at all. In this way, they were an easy means of having fresh meat.
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