1862 American Civil War Hard Tack
I’ve just been researching hard tack, the famous ship’s biscuit of the British Navy, though it was used by many nations in history. There was a claim on the internet that army hard tack from the American Civil War was the oldest preserved biscuit known. This isn’t a great age for a product that is claimed to be indestructible (and is well known to have been resistant to being eaten), so I had a further look. WW1 and Boer War biscuits are e common and there is a sample dating back to an Arctic expedition of 1875. It’s all a bit short of the 1860s, so could the American claims be correct?
No. Of course they aren’t. A more detailed search of the internet revealed a biscuit on display in Kronberg castle, Elsinore, Denmark (famous, I believe, for being the setting for Hamlet) is claimed to date from 1851.
1851 – Elsinore hard tack
And that answers my question, as long as my question is “What is the second oldest known hard tack biscuit in the world?” But it wasn’t. The normally reliable Danes have let us down on this one.
1784 Hard Tack
The oldest piece of hard tack I have been able to find dates from 1784. It has an inscription written on it, “This biscuit was given – Miss Blacket at Berwick on Tuesday 13 April 1784,” and is signed “Bewick”. The signature is thought to be from the famous wood engraver Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) and the biscuit has passed down the family by descent. Nine years older and it would not just be older than the oldest American example, but older than the USA itself. I’m still searching . . .
British Army Hard Tack 1914-18 – made by the famous biscuit manufacturers Huntley and Palmers.
Wow. That is brilliant.
Thank you. I keep looking at that WW1 biscuit and wondering at the successive improvements implied by the previous existence of Numbers 1, 2 and 3. Not a patch on Anzac biscuits though. 🙂
Fascinating stuff. XO
Thank you. Makes my teeth feel bad just thinking about it. 🙂
Rewarding research
It was interesting, and leads on to more – Ronnie Poulton, or Palmer or even Poulton-Palmer (he changed his name as a condition of a relative’s will), of Huntley and Palmers is to be found here – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Poulton
I think you will enjoy the story, though not the premature ending.
You were right about my response to the link. Another bloody waste
Yes. It makes you wonder what he could have done if he had lived.
The food at my boarding school was so sparse that there was a barrel of hard tack available for starving pupils to eat at break times. I ate a lot of it.
You are a living link to Nelson’s navy! 🙂 I used to bake it for Living History events, and eat it for a bet.
We even used to tap them to get the weevils out but disappointingly, there were never any weevils in them.
That’s a shame – I am a great admirer of Jack Aubrey’s “lesser of two weevils” joke.
I’m with Lavinia. Holy cats!
🙂
That 1784 Hard Tack is an ancient biscuit! I didn’t know they could last that long!
It’s very much like the alt dough biscuits we used on the farm – water, flour, salt, bake. My cutters rusted from all the salt, but the biscuits lasted forever.