Originally posted 06 June 2012

I enjoy the florid writing style of the Victorian era, which is never so vivid as when a writer was denouncing other people’s moral failings. Consider this example from the article ‘Our Social Position: Baneful Effects of Sly-grog Selling’ (1857), which is about the illegal taverns in Australia:

“Sly-grog shops are positively the curse of the country, and to these dens of infamy and shame can many a single hearted youth trace the ruin of his character, and his initiation into every species of evil and immorality.  At these places will be found congregated the known thieves and blackguards of a district; there they inveigle the unthinking, induce the habit of rum-drinking, and at last lead them from one illegal act to another, until the scholar becomes as proficient as the master in the practice of robbery and stealing the property of others.”

Modern writing is usually more dispassionate and factual, but rarely as fun to read.

Originally posted 01 June 2012

I have another example of how historical research can lead you down all sorts of unexpected avenues. In my first post about the mysterious initials on First World War rum jugs, I mentioned the supposition that they stood for Special Red Demerara. As far as I can tell, this theory was first proposed in an article in a Toronto’s National Post that was published on March 17, 2000. On a second reading of the original story, something about the quote caught my attention.

“It was a potent weapon of the First World War, and for Canadian soldiers entrenched on the Western Front it arrived each week in gallon jars marked with the letters S.R.D.-Special Red Demerara, 86-proof Jamaican rum.”

Demerara rum comes from Guyana, not Jamaica, so the author seems to have a rather hazy idea of geography. Another aspect of the article also seemed suspect; if this rum was made in such vast quantities that it could supply an entire army, why hadn’t I come across any other reference to it? I decided to contact Demerara Distillers of Guyana to find out whether such any rum from the region was ever designated “Special Red,” Mr. Ian Lye responded to my inquiry, and said that as far as the home office could determine, no rum has been made under that marque. Their research continues, and if they do find any record of such a brand, I will report it here.

There is a rum from Demerara that does have those S.R.D. initials, the Special Reserve Demerara, but that very fine beverage is produced in tiny quantities and would better fit an officer’s table than that of a common serviceman. I would raise a haughty eyebrow at the shoddy standards of journalism had I not been a member of the profession myself for many years – I have been caught in an error once or twice too, and have compassion for anyone who tries to give historical context while on a deadline.

Originally posted 31 May 2012

The theme of today’s post is Boston, where Felton & Sons made rum for centuries in this building:

Felton and Sons sold the building to the Mr. Boston company, which continued making rum there until the 1980’s. While doing so they distributed tens of thousands of copies of the Mr. Boston’s Bar Guide, and those little red books are part of many amateur bartenders’ collection.

The city of Boston is being celebrated because my book just received a wonderful review in the Boston Globe. I am grateful for the attention the book has been getting, and thank everyone who has reviewed it in newspapers, their blog posts, and on Amazon. I don’t have a big advertising budget, and even if I did, I could not replicate the honest actions of people who just write about what they like. I am sure that most authors feel the same way that I do, but unlike many of them I have a place to say it. Thank you.

Originally posted 29 May 2012

A reader named Joe sent this picture of a pair of rum bottles that raise some interesting questions. They are dated 1943 and contained Cuban rum “flavored with aromatics.”

They were imported by the Loucraft Corporation and bottled by Distillers Sales Company, and have the Courtesy Club trademark. Courtesy Club was primarily a whiskey distributor – this is their only association with rum that I have found. What I find most interesting are the words “flavored with aromatics” on the label. That implies that this was a spiced rum, and according to most sources, the first branded spiced rum to be marketed outside the Caribbean was Captain Morgan, which started production in 1944.

Whatever was in these bottles, they were a product of interesting times. The ships that carried them dodged U-boats to voyage from the sunny islands to the midwestern plains, the crew risking their lives to deliver a cargo of spirits. They sailed in the wakes of 18th Century pirates, Confederate blockade runners, and 20th Century bootleggers, and who can say whether they followed the traditions of merchantmen before them and tapped just a few bottles for the crew’s mess?

If you know anything about these bottles and the liquid they once contained, please send an email – Joe and I are both very curious to know more of the story.

Originally posted 28 May 2012

I’m going to make up for a few days away from my computer with a longish post that may not fully explain a tangled subject, but might shine a light on the more interesting loops in the knots. To start, the text of a grievance sent by Iroquois Chief Scarrooyady to the Governor of Pennsylvania on October 3, 1753:

“Your Traders now bring scarce anything but Rum and Flour; they bring little powder and lead, or other valuable goods. The Rum ruins us. We beg you would prevent its coming such quantities by regulating the Traders. We never understood the Trade was to be for Whiskey and Flour. We desire it may be forbidden, and none sold in the Indian Country; but if the Indians will have any they may go among the inhabitants and deal with them for it. When these Whiskey Traders come, They bring thirty or forty kegs and put them down before us and make us drink, and get all the skins that should go to pay the debts we have contracted for goods bought of the Fair Traders; by this means we not only ruin ourselves but them too. These wicked Whiskey Sellers, when they have once got the Indians in liquor, make them sell their very clothes from their backs. In short, if this practice be continued, we must be inevitably ruined.”

The first thing to note is that the chief refers to rum and whiskey interchangeably throughout the letter; to him they were essentially the same thing – raw alcohols that had been minimally improved by aging. This is an example of the problem with tracing the rum trade on the frontier, since traders might take one distilled alcohol on one journey, a different one on the next outing, and not record the difference. The participants on both sides of the trade were indiscriminate and vague about their terminology.

Second, modern people who learn about the trade with the natives often focus on the fact that an intoxicating liquor was the medium of exchange with a people who were unused to its effects. This ignores a pivotal fact: that alcohol was the principal barter item between the colonists too. As I detail in the book (you do have a copy, don’t you?) the colonies were chronically short of coinage, and rum was the common currency for all kinds of transactions. The Europeans who traded with the Iroquois may have taken advantage of the fact that the natives were poor bargainers when intoxicated, but this was probably an unintended by-product of their economic system.

I don’t have a good picture of actual Iroquois of this period, but you may enjoy this circus poster from the 1890’s.

I presume that this image answers your questions.

Originally posted 24 May 2012

Sailors aboard a shipload of rum might be delighted by the opportunities to tap one of the kegs in the hold, but they had to keep in mind one of the dangers inherent in a cargo of flammable liquid.

This painting depicts the last minutes of the Kent, a cargo ship that was on its maiden voyage in 1825 when she caught fire and sank. As a later report put it, ” By the roll of the vessel, a cask of spirits had been displaced; and, as the men were about to fix it in its former position, a heavy sea struck the ship, and precipitated a candle from the hands of one of them. This, falling on a small portion of the spirits, which had escaped from the cask, produced an instant conflagration, which defied every effort to stay its progress.” The ship had been on the way from London to India, but had only made it to a point near the coast of France before burning and sinking. Eighty-one people were killed despite the presence of a nearby ship that picked up the survivors, and captains around the world demanded greater scrutiny of rum cargoes to make sure none had leaked. There can be no accurate accounting of how often this kind of accident happened, since most ships that suffered such an accident must have left no survivors to tell the tale.

Originally posted 23 May 2012

I have been known to experiment with rum in my own kitchen and enjoy the theatricality of flaming dishes, but there is such a thing as going too far. One might surmise that this recipe from the 1950’s for baked beans flamed with rum is an example of style over substance.

Baked Beans Au Glow-Glow
Ingredients:

• 4 c Canned Baked Beans
• 1/4 c Molasses
• 1/4 c Ketchup
• 1 tb Yellow Table Mustard
• 4 slices Bacon (cut in half)
• 1/2 c Dark Rum

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Combine ingredients, except bacon and rum, in large casserole.
Cover beans with bacon slices and bake until the bacon is done — 2 hours.
Warm rum in small sauce pan, ignite and spoon over the hot beans.

Note that the beans are covered with strips of bacon, which the flaming rum is poured over, so you can fill your home with the delightful smell of flaming bacon fat. Note also that this dish was concocted before the invention of the modern smoke alarm, which may be one of many reasons for its fall from favor. The source for this is “Fashionable Food, Seven Decades of Food Fads” by Sylvia Lovegren, and if you wish to visit the chamber of horrors that is cooking in the 50’s and 60’s, this book is a great place to start. Sylvia credits the recipe to John J. Poister, a food and travel columnist for the New Yorker and other magazines, who certainly should have known better. I’ll add a cup of dark rum to a pot of my chili, but this is beyond reason.

Meanwhile, the reviews for the book keep coming in – one just appeared in AllStarCask, a rum blog that I was unaware of before. I keep learning about more people around the world who share an interest in not only drinking good rum, but writing about it. Civilization may not fall after all.

Originally posted 22 May 2012

Though rum was used as a de facto currency in Australia, Colonial America, and other places, I haven’t found any examples of coinage or paper currency that actually feature rum barrels. The case is different with stamps, as you can see from these examples.

First, a distillery from the Netherlands Antilles, date unknown:

From Cuba in 1982, a barrel of rum:

And a stamp that wasn’t issued by a government, but nevertheless will get your mail delivered if you are fortunate enough to live in Hawaii. A local delivery company issues beautiful stamps commemorating Hawaiiana, like this one:

Know of any other stamps or currency that feature rum or distilleries? I’d like to see them.

Originally posted 20 May 2012

After I posted the entry on the Canadian military rum jug, I realized I had another picture that showed one very much like it. This picture of two Scottish soldiers in a bombed-out landscape probably dates from 1916, and is entitled “Sorry, it is empty.”

There is a look of longing and sadness on the poor fellow on the left, watching his comrade drain the last dregs from the rum jug. Soldiers in the armies of the modern world have it much better in every other way – air-conditioned tents in desert heat, modern water-shedding clothing in damp climate, more nutritious and better-preserved food – but they are denied the official rations of liquor that comforted their grandfathers in the fields of Flanders and France. (Photo from the archive of the National Libarary of Scotland, public domain.)

On another topic, “Rum: A Global History” is starting to get reviews. One of the first is from the Swedish drinks blog A Mountain of Crushed Ice, which reprinted the recipe for Martha Washington’s Rum Punch. I have been enjoying this blog for some time and am honored to be featured there. If you have seen other reviews of the book that I might have missed, please let me know.

Originally posted 17 May 2012

Soldiers in the British and Canadian military during the First World War were always delighted when they saw this jug, even though they were unsure of the meaning of the initials on the side.

The contents were definitely rum, and depending on who you talked to, the three letters stood for Special Red Demerara, Service Rum Distribution, or other names of the type beloved by bureaucrats. The soldiers naturally came up with their own acronyms: Seldom Reaches Destination and Soon Runs Dry were both popular. The jugs were delivered to the battlefields in the thousands and can still be found in antique shops in France and Belgium.

Thanks to Wolf for sending this tidbit. Do you know an interesting facet of rum history, have questions about a traditional tipple, or have a clear picture of an unusual or mysterious rum-related artifact? Send it to me using the link at the bottom of this page, and I will be happy to research it or feature it here.