Captain James Cook, Gilbert Blane and Vitamin-C

A friend of my - also Master Mariner but during the age of steam - taught me once that if Oriental crewmembers stop fishing, the food on board is probably to good (and thus too expensive in the owners point of view). Maybe so, our food on board is very good indeed but our assistant engineer Ding simply can't see the fishing rod unemployed on deck. Even during his tea break in the middle of the night you will find him on deck. He caught a lot of these small fish and told me he will try to smoke them. I wonder what my friend, who also taught me how to smoke fish, would think of this idea. I am not sure if these small fish are fat enough to smoke, we'll see.
Talking about fat, food on board ships varied from not enough to prevent two million seamen from dying because of scurvy, to five star dinners on luxury passenger liners.
Centuries ago, the British Admiralty was convinced that the dreaded Scurvy could only be prevented by eating fat in dried meat. Captain James Cook proved that this was wrong and that vegetables and fresh fruit prevented Scurvy. The Admiralty was not willing to listen to this great explorer and seafarer. Finally in 1775, after ship's doctor Gilbert Blane showed the Admiralty that more crewmembers fell victim to Scurvy than in all the glorious British sea-battles together, the Lords of the Admiralty finally accepted his theory.

The solution was simple, vitamin-c is the word. But if you could only see what is on our table every day, you don't have to worry that scurvy will come back on our ship.