Drink (31 page)

Washington’s insistence on spirits for soldiers is interesting, for his own tastes in drink were very broad. At home in Virginia he drank rum, punch, Madeira, and other imported wines, which he supplemented with homemade spirits (he had four stills on his estate), cider, and beer. During the conflict he continued to be catholic in his own tastes, while working to ensure that the spirit rations of his men were maintained. A molasses levy was laid on several states; indeed the substance was treated as a strategic raw material. The taste for spirits that Washington imputed to his troops was shared by his subordinate commanders, especially General Israel Putnam, a thickset, lisping illiterate with “a head like a cannonball” and a good candidate for the title of the hardest man in the entire conflict. Wounded several times, yet still contemptuous of bullets, Putnam is recorded as being distressed in battle only once—when “a shot had passed through his canteen and spilt all his rum.”

The entry of France into the conflict settled the result in favor of independence. On the principal that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, France had been the first country to recognize the new republic and had supplied it with weapons, advisors, and provisions from 1778 onward. In 1781, the intervention of the French fleet compelled the surrender of an encircled British army at Yorktown, Virginia, which proved to be the last major engagement of the War of Independence. The following year the British parliament voted for peace with its former colonies, and the terms were negotiated in Paris with Benjamin Franklin representing America. The contribution of the rum trade to the origin of the conflict, whose resolution was to have momentous consequences for the global balance of power, was later acknowledged by John Adams: “I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence,” for “many great events have proceeded from much smaller causes.”

The French financial and military aid that had ensured victory in the War of Independence continued after peace was declared, and the management of the relationship between France and America was vital to the survival of the new republic in its early years. Benjamin Franklin performed this delicate task between 1776 and 1785, when he served as America’s representative to the royal court. He occupied a villa in Passy and was a favorite of the modish French. An account of the alcohol consumption in his household has survived, which shows an interesting mixture of colonial potations and those of his host nation. The account, in terms of volume, is topped by Madeira, followed by wine, “cherry wine,” cider, and pink champagne. English beer also features on it, as do a few token bottles of rum. It shows that Franklin himself continued to prefer the beverages fashionable in his native land to those more readily available among his nation’s allies. His tastes may be contrasted with those of Thomas Jefferson, who replaced him.

Jefferson represented America in France between 1785 and 1789. During this stay he showed the keenest interest in French wine, to the exclusion of other kinds of alcoholic beverage. Jefferson had a lifelong interest in establishing viticulture in America, and in 1787 he took a three-month sabbatical that he spent touring the vineyards of France and Italy. Whereas his stated aims for this journey were to heal an injury by taking the waters at the famous spa of Aix-en-Provence, and to spy on Italian rice growing,
²⁷
to judge by his letters, journals, and actions, he also was on a private mission to discover the secrets of French winemaking.

He kept a diary of his travels, which is notable for its fascination with viticulture to the exclusion of most other matters. It contains a few sketches of the local peasantry and their misery, but wine, winemakers, and the vineyards in which they worked their magic are its principal subjects. Jefferson clearly was thinking of where similar vintages to those he tasted on his tour might be produced in his own country, and when a parallel landscape came to mind, he wrote it down. The Champagne district, for example reminded him of “the Elk Hill and Beaver-dam hills of Virginia.” Burgundy and Bordeaux received his special attention. He described not just the look but the feel of their soils, the orientation and elevation of their vineyards, recorded how their vines were trained, how much wine they yielded, and what the wine was worth, both in situ and in Paris.

Jefferson demonstrated a keen palate in his journal—he had become a connoisseur of wine, able to detect the potential for greatness in some of the little-known or forgotten vintages he came across on his tour. Near Turin, for example, he tasted a “very singular” “red wine of Nebiule” of which he wrote, “It is about as sweet as the silky Madeira, as astringent on the palate as Bordeaux, and as brisk as Cham- pagne.” He also showed a detailed knowledge of the esoteric system of ranking wines then prevalent in Bordeaux, and his account of its
premier crus
illustrates his methodical approach to his subject:

In Jefferson’s absence, the United States had formulated a constitution, a legislature, and an executive, and had selected George Washington as their first president. Jefferson was eager to convert his fellow Americans to his belief that independence in wine production was of strategic importance. To this end, he sent back samples to taste and vine cuttings to plant. His journal records the pleasure he derived from persuading “our President, General Washington, to try a sample of thirty dozen bottles” of sweet white Sauternes, and other American luminaries were likewise consigned large quantities of the best French vintages.

16 WARRA WARRA

Whereas alcohol had been associated with the struggle for freedom in Britain’s former colonies in America, it was to act as an instrument of oppression in the kingdom’s newest territories. Defeat in the War of Independence had led to domestic problems in Britain. The country possessed exceptionally severe criminal laws, which mandated capital punishment for such trivial offences as stealing more than ten shillings’ worth of goods, kicking London Bridge, and impersonating a Chelsea pensioner. The death sentence might, however, be commuted to one of transportation overseas, and since it could no longer dump its criminals on America, and its jails were overflowing, Britain cast about for a new depository for them abroad. A penal-colony-cum-naval-station was their ideal, and they settled on Das Voltas Bay, on the Skeleton Coast of Southwest Africa, with Australia (which had been explored and claimed for Britain by Captain James Cook in 1770, but which since had been neglected) a very distant second choice. A reconnaissance mission was sent to scout out Das Voltas, which returned with the unwelcome verdict that it was uninhabitable. The only other option to have been considered was Australia, so Australia it was. A fleet of eleven ships was prepared, loaded with officials including Governor Arthur Phillip, a priest, a regiment of marines and their band, livestock, and tools, and 754 convicts; and on May 13, 1787, it was dispatched to the other side of the world.

The fleet stopped three times en route: at the Canary Islands, to stock up on wine, at Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, to take on the local firewater, and at Cape Town, where livestock, seeds, more provisions, more wine, and some vine cuttings were purchased. The vast quantity of alcohol rations carried by the fleet—three years’ worth against a two-year supply of food—was an official concession made to the marines, who had insisted that they could not be expected “to survive the hardships” of Australia without a guaranteed supply of booze.

Eight months and one week after leaving England, having completed, in the words of David Collins, a young marine who was to be judge advocate in the new colony, “a voyage which, before it was undertaken, the mind hardly dared venture to contemplate,” the fleet dropped anchor in Botany Bay, on the east coast of Australia. This place had been selected on the recommendation of Cook, who had noted its promise as a port in his journal. However, upon inspection, it was found to be unsuitable for settlement. A neighboring location, Port Jackson, a gap in the cliffs Cook had named as he sailed past, was explored and pronounced perfect. Beyond the gap was a deep, protected harbor, with a spring of fresh water, and dry level land for building. On January 26, 1788, the fleet transferred to Port Jackson. The male convicts were disembarked first and set to work clearing bush for a camp. On February 6, the women were allowed ashore. The event was celebrated with the issue of a double ration of rum. An all-night rutting party between the female convicts, the sailors, and the marines ensued—an evil omen for the future influence of alcohol on an innocent continent. As an eyewitness observed of the preliminaries to the birth of a nation: “It is beyond my abilities to give a just description of the scene of debauchery and riot that ensued during the night.”

The morning after was equally appalling. The firewater that the fleet had taken on in Rio gave crushing hangovers. According to a marine officer: “That [Brazilians] have not learned the art of making palatable rum . . . the English troops in New South Wales can bear testimony.” Unpleasant as it was, the daily aguardiente ration—“half a pint of vile Rio spirits, so offensive in both taste & smell that he must be fond of drinking indeed that can use it”—was cherished by the marines as the single difference in rations between themselves and the convicts. Indeed, for the first precarious years of the penal colony’s existence, a rum allowance, as much as a uniform, was the sign of a free man.

In time, a second and a third fleet arrived from Britain, which carried free settlers as well as convicts, the New South Wales Corps who were to replace the marines as guardians of the colony, and plentiful quantities of alcohol. Stocks were further increased by supply ships from Bengal and Cape Town. By 1792, sufficient amounts of booze had been landed for the authorities to decide to conduct an experiment. A license to sell porter was issued, the beverage in question to be taken from the cargo of the
Royal Admiral
. Although only free settlers were allowed to buy it, and only porter was allowed to be sold, “under the cover of this, spirits found their way among the[m], and much intoxication was the consequence. Several of the settlers, breaking out from the restraint to which they had been subject, conducted themselves with the greatest impropriety, beating their wives, destroying their stock, trampling on and injuring their crops in the ground, and destroying each other’s property.”

While the porter experiment was not quickly repeated, alcohol continued to reach both the settlers and convicts. Fresh supplies kept sailing into Sydney Cove, some from the most unlikely sources. On November 1, 1792, an American ship, the
Philadelphia,
dropped her anchor. Her intrepid owner, Captain Patrickson, had heard from a homebound British supply ship he’d met in Cape Town that the colony in New South Wales paid exorbitant prices for everything, and so had sailed five thousand miles from Africa to Australia with his cargo of American trade goods on spec. His wares were perfect for Australia: “American beef, wine, rum, gin, some tobacco, pitch, and tar.” Captain Patrickson had made his enterprising voyage with only thirteen hands, one of whom he’d lost overboard en route. As if to prove it had been no miracle, the following month another Yankee trader put in “the
Hope,
commanded by a Mr. Benjamin Page, from Rhode Island, with a small cargo of provisions and spirits for sale.”

Both Americans made handsome profits on their stock, which the military and civil officers of the colony were permitted to purchase for their own use. However, from such nominally responsible owners, “the American spirit . . . by some means or other found its way among the convicts; and, a discreet use of it being wholly out of the question with those people, intoxication was become common among them.” Moreover, all the drink sloshing round New South Wales had a perceptible effect on the behavior of its free inhabitants. The familiar 2-Rabbit traits appeared among them, and in 1793 the first drink-related deaths were recorded. Eleanor McCave, her infant child, and “a woman of the name of Green” were drowned in the harbor, after spending all day “drinking and reveling” in Sydney. They were followed to the grave by James Hatfield, “a man who had been looked upon as a sober good character,” but who had been waylaid by friends en route from his farm to Sydney, and “partaking intemperately of the American rum, he was seized with a dysentery, which carried him off in a few days.” Alcohol claimed a third victim the next month, when the body of John Richards, a settler from Parramatta, was discovered, and an autopsy determined that he had killed himself with rum.

This spate of casualties, and other drink-related disorders, were perceived of as unhappy accidents, to which the authorities responded with appropriate rigor. Convicts who tried to trade for alcohol with the soldiers who guarded them were to be flogged. A licensing system was introduced for the free settlers, and any who attempted “to sell liquor without a licence were to have their stock seized, and their houses pulled down.” Notwithstanding such strict limitations on who might buy, sell, or consume alcohol, a free market of sorts in it developed, and in December 1793, a selection of drinks appeared on the official record of market prices in Sydney for the first time: