Say it with food

Navy cooks, although limited by space, facilities and food choice, somehow manage to turn out magnificant meals for large numbers of people.

Photo: ABPH Brenton Freind

By LEUT Tom Lewis

The food of the navy has changed over its times, and most would agree - from bad to good to best!

There were plenty of grumblings about food in the early days of the RAN. The Member for Corio investigated some Navy complaints.

He found the diet of the men in former ships consisted of a breakfast of porridge and bread and butter, a lunch of roast meat and potatoes with no other vegetables, and pudding only twice a week, and a supper of bread and butter and tea.

Life was a little better if you were an officer because you paid for better food.

VADM Peek recalls how when he joined the RAN in 1928, officers fed themselves to a better standard by putting in two shillings out of their five shillings a day pay.

How good the mess fare was depended on messmen and obviously how much the officers decided to contribute.

English pies were a favourite and most Sunday nights they usually had tinned salmon.

LEUT John Ross recalls that although fresh fruit and vegetables disappeared after a few weeks at sea, fresh bread was always made.

Ross also recalls how the addition of money to the food allowance allowed ‘three-course lunches’ and ‘fourcourse dinners’.

Food in WWII varied widely from ship to ship and location to location. Leave ashore often meant the usual chores, haircut and a good meal.

Stan Nicholls notes of his time in HMAS Shropshire in the Japanese Pacific war, the ship’s company had boiled eggs for breakfast, tinned sausages and ‘redlead’ for lunch and camp pie or bully beef for supper.

A variation was tinned beans and pork for breakfast followed by frankfurts for lunch and tinned fruit and our ‘favourite’ bully beef for supper.

He noted though that much of the food was “canned and dehydrated, mostly unappetising and obviously of poor quality as it failed to give the nutrition required to keep us healthy”.

Some 28% of the ship’s company was suffering health problems at one stage in 1944 due to the food’s poor quality. Occasionally in WWII things improved for a special occasion.

Warramunga’s Christmas dinner in 1944 was roast turkey and ham, beans and peas, plum pudding and brandy sauce, fruit trifle and jelly, nuts and beer.

Christmas tea was Christmas cake, nuts, iced fruit juice and supper was giblet soup, cold roast pork and ham, potato salad and mayonnaise, iced fruit juice.

Of course, the limitations on the ships’ cooks have always been quite harsh, yet these cooks managed to turn out magnificent meals. Saturday night at sea often saw two huge roasts with all of the trimmings, cooked to a quality that would rival any restaurant.

In the early sixties the quality seemed to be high and also consistent - if a little unusual by today’s standards.

Breakfast was often ‘train smash’ or a sort of ‘tomato au gratin’ - tinned tomatoes with cheese on top.

Also at breakfast were devilled kidneys, and what was known as ‘yellow peril’: smoked cod, in fact.

Eggs were always on the menu, as was bacon. Baked dinners were more than the norm; even baked lunches. Evenings always had soup to start.

Afternoon tea was a sit-down time with bread and Vegemite or bread and jam.

By the second or third week at sea though, the meals began to go down in quality. The food choice and quality today has improved by a great percentage.

There is a higher standard in dietary training, guided by nutritionists.

A ship’s menu has to be approved by a medical officer to ensure it fits in with dietary requirements.

Most training is done in conjunction with TAFE College and international cuisine is now part of the Navy’s menu - Thai beef is just one dish now offered in many galleys.

Sources:

Gill, G. Hermon. Royal Australian Navy 1942-1945. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1968.
Hunt, Lieutenant Errol, RANR. Interview 11-13 May 2001. Nicholls, Stan. HMAS Shropshire. Sydney: Naval Historical Society of Australia, 1999. Payne, RAN Petty Officer Megan. Interview 16 May 2001. Peek, Vice-Admiral Sir Richard, RAN (rtd.) Interview 24 May 2001. Reeve, WE. “The Scrap Iron Flotilla”. Journal of Naval Engineering, 38, 3, 1999. Spurling, Katherine. “A Strategy for the Lower Deck” in Stevens, D. and Reeve, J. (Eds.) Southern Trident. NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2001. (271). Sydney Morning Herald. “What course captain; entrée or main?” 20 July, 2002. (6). Ross, WH. Lucky Ross. Western Australia: Hesperian Press, 1994. 75 Years. Film. History of the Royal Australian Navy. Canberra: RAN, 1988

 

 

 

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