Hardtack (or hard tack) is a type of dense cracker made from flour, water, and sometimes salt. Hardtack is inexpensive and long-lasting. It is used for sustenance in the absence of perishable foods, commonly during long sea voyages, land migrations, and military campaigns. Along with salt pork and corned beef, hardtack was a standard ration for many militaries and navies from the 17th to the early 20th centuries

The name is derived from "tack", the British sailor slang for food. The earliest use of the term recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1830.

It is known by other names including brewis (possibly a cognate with "brose"), cabin bread, pilot bread, sea biscuit, soda crackers, sea bread (as rations for sailors), ship's biscuit, and pejoratively as dog biscuits, molar breakers, sheet iron, tooth dullers, Panzerplatten ("armor plates"; Germany) and worm castles. Australian and New Zealand military personnel knew them with some sarcasm as ANZAC wafers (not to be confused with Anzac biscuit).

History

The introduction of the baking of processed cereals, including the creation of flour, provided a more reliable source of food. Egyptian sailors carried a flat brittle loaf of millet bread called dhourra cake. A cracker called bucellatum is known in Ancient Rome. King Richard I of England left for the Third Crusade (1189–1192) with "biskit of muslin", which was a mixed grain compound of barley, bean flour, and rye.

Because hardtack biscuits were baked hard, they would stay intact for years if kept dry. For long voyages, hardtack was baked four times, rather than the more common two, and prepared six months before sailing. Because it is dry and hard, hardtack, when properly stored and transported, will survive rough handling and temperature extremes. Dry hardtack is dense and virtually inedible; troops issued it usually made it edible by dampening, or crushing the biscuits

When James VI and I set sail for Norway in October 1589, his provisions included 15,000 "bisquit baiks". By at least 1731, it was officially codified in Naval regulation that each sailor was rationed one pound (450 g) of biscuit per day.

By 1818, the United States Navy had outlined that each sailor was to be given 14 ounces (400 g) of bread per day as part of their daily ration while serving onboard in the form of hardtack.

During the American Civil War (1861–1865), three-by-three-inch (7.6 by 7.6 cm) hardtack was shipped from Union and Confederate storehouses. Civil War soldiers generally found their rations to be unappealing, and joked about the poor quality of the hardtack in the satirical song "Hard Tack Come Again No More".

With insect infestation common in improperly stored provisions, soldiers would break up the hardtack and drop it into their morning coffee. This would not only soften the hardtack but the insects, mostly weevil larvae, would float to the top, and the soldiers could skim them off and eat the biscuits. The grubs "left no distinctive flavor behind.

Some men turned hardtack into a mush by breaking it up with blows from their rifle butts, then adding water. If the men had a frying pan, they could cook the mush into a lumpy pancake; otherwise they dropped the mush directly on the coals of their campfire. They also mixed hardtack with brown sugar, hot water, and sometimes whiskey to create what they called a pudding, to serve as dessert.

Modern Use

Commercially available hardtack is a significant source of food energy in a small, durable package. A store-bought 24-gram cracker can contain 100 calories (20 percent from fat) from 2 grams of protein but practically no fiber.

Food That Time Forgot: Ships Biscuits - townsends

How to Eat Like a Pirate: Hardtack & Grog - tasting history

🐻Link to all Hexbear comms https://hexbear.net/post/1403966
📀 Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube](https://live.hexbear.net/c/movies
🔥 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread https://hexbear.net/post/5042186
⚔ Come talk in the New Weekly PoC thread https://hexbear.net/post/4738774
✨ Talk with fellow Trans comrades in the New Weekly Trans thread https://hexbear.net/post/5039365
👊 New Weekly Improvement thread https://hexbear.net/post/5031369
🧡 Disabled comm megathread https://hexbear.net/post/4891939
Parenting Chat https://hexbear.net/post/5020579

reminders:

💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
💜 Sorting by new you nerd
🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

Theory:

❤️Foundations of Leninism
❤️Anarchism and Other Essays

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] BanSwitch2Buyers@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Neighbours are like psycho-fascists, regular conservative dipshits, and the occasional city liberal who's still kinda' dumb but way more tolerable than the fascists. The nearby towns seem to have some left-presence at least but they're too far away to really connect with for me and it's like SucDem stuff at best as far as I can tell. I see left-wing basic income signs and stuff in town. I emailed the communist party but they have zero presence here and after my first email they never got back to me. I emailed like once, got no response. Months later tried again, got a response asking for clarification/follow-up Qs, I promptly gave them the info and then no response again.

[–] TerminalEncounter@hexbear.net 4 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

My mom's definitely become more to the left over time but like a gen x kind of left, "fuck the corporations" kind of left.

We talked a lot about my unions negotiations for wages (amongst other things which of course the press didn't mention, like safe patient ratios). She thought it was unfair we wanted a higher wage when so many worked for so little - she thought it was cruel or unkind when I suggested that they should get in a union and fight for their wages! Same story with the ongoing teachers union (same tension too, the press is going on and on about the wage demands and not that theyre also fighting for more appropriate class sizes).

Im sympathetic to people who make so little, its bullshit, they work hard and get nothing for it. But you have to fucking struggle and hold together if you want a hope at winning concessions like wages. They didn't give us wages cause nurses are so mean, we were willing and prepared to walk away after a year of negotiation including off the job. And our union has a history of illegal strikes, we'll do it if we need to. And its not even the beginning and end of the struggle, the whole thing is like this because we're arguing for slices of a pie - fuck the slices of the pie, we should get the whole pie and the knife the bourgeoisie wanna use to cut it up. But how can we get there if we aren't even willing to hold on and struggle and strike for something like livable wages???