Flour and ship’s biscuit: feeding the sugar islands

Where did colonial flour come from?

William Penn’s city of Philadelphia was laid out in 1682, and the rich farmland around it was soon given over to wheat. Before long, wheat was the crop Pennsylvania farmers grew most, and flour was the colony’s biggest export. Mills grew up along the creeks, driven by water wheels: one near Philadelphia was built in 1683, and the Newlin Grist Mill on Chester Creek in about 1704. Later in the century, bigger “merchant mills” bought wheat from farmers and sold the flour themselves, sending it down to Philadelphia by small boat.

By 1700 a report sent to the customs officials in London singled out bread and flour as the backbone of Philadelphia’s trade with the West Indies, thanks to the good farmland of southeastern Pennsylvania. New York had been shipping flour for export even longer. Because they sold so much grain, flour and bread, historians often call these Middle colonies the “bread colonies”, a later label rather than one people used at the time.

Why did the sugar islands buy so much food?

On islands such as Barbados most of the best land was planted with sugar cane. Sugar paid so well that planters preferred to buy food, even at high prices, rather than give up land to grow it. From the 1640s ships from New England brought bread, salt fish, meat and lumber to the islands, and the farms of New York and Pennsylvania later joined in with wheat, corn and bread. By the 1750s about half of everything the Middle colonies exported went to the British and French sugar islands.

The islands did still grow food, but much of it was grown by enslaved people themselves. Planters gave them small plots called provision grounds, and they raised yams, plantains, cassava and other crops in the few hours left after their work in the cane. In Barbados the grain usually handed out to enslaved people was maize (corn), with a small weekly ration of salt fish, not wheat flour. Food was often short, and hunger was common. The flour trade was part of a system built on slavery, and some Philadelphia merchants of the time, such as Jonathan Dickinson, also owned land in Jamaica and bought and sold enslaved people.

How was flour packed and shipped?

Flour was packed tightly into wooden barrels made by coopers, the craftsmen who built casks. Larger casks called tierces and smaller half barrels were used too. Each barrel was branded with the miller’s registered mark, so a buyer far away knew who had made it and who to blame if it was bad.

Small merchant ships carried the barrels south to ports such as Bridgetown, often with casks of bread, pork and fish in the same hold.

The trade became huge. In the year to Christmas 1740, about 25 years after the game begins, Philadelphia alone shipped about 54,000 barrels of flour, thousands of casks of bread and over 300,000 bushels of wheat.

Why were there laws about flour?

A colony’s flour sold on its good name. If some millers mixed in poor flour or packed light barrels, buyers in the islands would stop trusting all of it.

New York tried a monopoly. From 1678 Governor Edmund Andros ordered that export flour be checked only in New York City, and from about 1680 only the city could bolt (sift) flour and pack it for sale abroad. Bakers there also had to keep biscuit and ordinary bread on sale. Country people hated the rule, and it ended in 1694. The city spent years asking for it back, complaining that poorly sifted country flour had harmed New York’s name in the West Indies. Flour barrels and windmill sails still appear on New York City’s seal.

Pennsylvania chose inspection instead. In the 1720s it passed laws against exporting flour and bread that was “not merchantable”, meaning not good enough to sell. Export flour had to meet a set standard, carry the miller’s brand and weigh what it claimed, with heavy fines for cheats.

What was ship’s biscuit?

Ship’s biscuit was a plain, hard bread for long voyages. Bakers mixed flour and water, sometimes with a little salt, into a stiff dough, baked it, then left it to dry out completely. Kept dry, it could last for months or even years. Sailors at the time simply called it “biscuit” or “bread”. The name “hardtack” came later, in about 1830.

In the Royal Navy a sailor’s ration was a pound of biscuit a day. It was so hard that men broke it with a heavy object, sucked the pieces, or soaked them in their drink or stew. In warm, damp holds it often went mouldy or filled with insects. Sailors called them weevils, though many were really small beetles and their grubs, which were unpleasant but did no harm if eaten. Philadelphia and New York bakers made biscuit both for passing ships and for sale in the islands.

How did flour link the mainland colonies to the Caribbean?

Flour helped tie the colonies into one trading web. Ships took food and lumber south and came back with sugar, molasses, rum and bills of exchange, paper promises of payment drawn on London merchants. Mainland merchants used those bills to buy cloth and ironware from Britain.

The French islands were supposed to trade only with France, under a set of rules called the Exclusif. French merchants in Bordeaux did send wine and flour to the islands and bring home sugar and indigo. But North American flour was much closer, and smugglers filled the gap. Records from Martinique in 1717 describe English ships slipping in flour, bread, boards and horses, with links to New York and Barbados.