Up Spirits

When I joined the Royal Canadian Navy it was steeped in tradition, some of it going back to the days of sailing ships – the days of Wooden ships and iron men - most of it brought over from England’s Royal Navy.

Rum on board naval vessels goes back before the 1700’s and the tradition of offering all hands a tot of rum goes back to 1824. In making the tot official they brought down the amount issued each sailor from half a pint to 2 ½ ounces of pusser’s rum.

In case you were wondering, pusser is Royal Navy slang for a purser, a ship's supply officer. the word became naval slang anything that is was supplied by the Navy, Pusser's Rum is sometimes known as Nelson's Blood, in honor of Admiral Nelson, the famous and arguably the greatest of the Royal Navy commanders it history.

In the 1960’s the pusser’s rum was supplied by Lamb's  distilleries.

At six bells, the bos’n’s call would signal “Up Spirits." It was the end of work for the morning and with the call, everyone would head back to their mess deck, grab their mug and line up for their measure of rum. Everyone had their favorite mug or glass usually purloined from some bar.

It was a social time so for half an hour or so before lunch, we’d sit around the mess talking about where we were headed and telling stories about exploits ashore.

Rum was tradition but, it was also currency. Favours were paid back by offering a couple of tots, The bigger the favours, the more rum it was worth. Offering to take someone else’s duty watch while in a foreign port could cost you a week or two’s worth of your ration of rum.

 Me and Roger Laye somewhere in the tropics

Saving your rum was very much against the rules but, if you were crafty, it could be done. You had a choice but the process was, either take it down neat when it was issued, in front of the officer of the watch or, you had to mix it with coke. The trick was, as soon as the rum was poured into your mug, you turned to walk away quickly putting your thumb over the edge of the cup holding the Coke and pretending to pour it in. Then we’d save it.

After you had done this for a couple of days, and since dark navy rum was the same colour as Coke, you could simply begin to mix your saved rum with the new tot each day. In just over two weeks you could save a full bottle. A forty ouncer pussers rum was worth a lot.

For a guy like me, not much of a mid day drinker, this practice paid off in spades.

In the 1070’s the Navy was not so much looking for “iron men” as they were seeking out people who could operate and maintain the increasingly technical weapons systems. It is tough to work your way through the electronics after a couple of tots so he Canadian Navy stopped this tradition in 1972, the last Commonwealth to do so.