Live to-be food on board
Large sailing ships that carried paying passengers, such as the Flying Cloud, set sail with a lot of critters on board that were destined for dinner plates.
There are some records of the livestock carried by the Flying Cloud. For example, a letter from Sarah H. Bowman, one of the passengers on the Flying Cloud’s first New York to San Francisco voyage, to her sister included the following about the livestock aboard the ship:
You don't know how odd it seems of a morning when comfortably seated in my rocking chair on deck - when gazing over the broad ocean, to hear roosters crowing, hens cackling, turkeys gobbling, pigs grunting, and lambs bleating. There is an immense amount of livestock on board and our ice house is still well stocked with provisions - so no danger but we shall fare well enough let us have ever so long a voyage. We number, sailors and all, seventy-eight - quite a village.[i]
As well as the following about a 4th of July meal:
The Fourth of July! And Willie Hall chosen the orator of the day! Behold us all on the clean deck dressed in our very gayest - gents and ladies with faces beaming gladly all determined on being happy. The bell rings for dinner. Descend we to the richly furnished cabin. I must name the goodies which crowd our table. Roast turkey and chicken with oyster sauce, roast pig, boiled ham, all kinds of vegetables, English Plum pudding, cares, Blanc Mange, walnuts, filberts, almonds, raisins, oranges, apples, champagne and Madeira in abundance.
The same book also included the transcript of an interview with one of the Flying Cloud’s crew, done 45 years after he was a crew member. The interview included the following about the food on board not being just for the paying passengers:
You often hear of hardships
suffered by sailors and abuse at the hands of their master - bad food badly
cooked, long hours and a belaboring with anything that came handy to force them
to work faster. We were always well fed on the Flying Cloud and got plenty of
sleep. We had a fresh meat dinner every Sunday and once in the middle of the
week. There were plenty of live sheep, chickens, ducks and pigs aboard. There
was nothing mean or close about our "old man."
Charles Stoddard, who, as a young boy, had been a passenger on a voyage of the Flying Cloud in early 1857, wrote:
there were fresh eggs for
breakfast, fresh pork for dinner, fresh
chicken for supper
and
A list of our live-stock: 17
pigs; 12 dozen hens and roosters; 3 turkeys; 1 gobbler; a cockatoo and a
wild-cat.[ii]
See Robert Leslie’s 1890 book Old Sea Wings, Ways, and Words, in the Days of Oak and Hemp for a description of food and livestock carried by sailing ships of the time.[iii]
Sailing ships like the Flying Cloud needed to carry a lot of food since voyages could last a long time without any landfall to replenish supplies. Most people in the ship modeling world know about the two 89-day voyages from New York to San Francisco but the Flying Cloud also had many longer voyages, including 115-day voyages from New York to San Francisco and from Hong Kong to New York and a 123-day voyage from Hong Kong to London.[iv] A lot of food indeed!
Now the question is where to store the beasts until it’s time for them to become food. In some cases, the beasts were allowed to have the run of the deck. See figure 1.
Figure 1 – Pigs on deck[v]
In other cases, such as on the Cutty Sark, a part of the forecastle was dedicated to the larger animals. See figure 2.
Figure 2 – Pig pen on Cutty Sark
The Cutty Sark also has chicken coops. See figure 3
Figure 3 – The Queen with Cutty Sark chicken coop
The Charles W Morgan also has a chicken coop. See figure 4.
Figure 4 – Chicken coop on the Charles W. Morgan
A letter from one of the descendants of a Flying Cloud passenger notes that the Flying Cloud “carried chicken coops to supply fresh meat for the voyage which were, in fair weather, slung outboard over the gun'ls.”[vi]
I have not found any document that discusses a livestock pen on the Flying Cloud to house the sheep and pigs but the Boucher models of the Flying Cloud in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in Boston MA and in the Addison Gallery of Art at Phillips Academy in Andover MA show livestock pens over the forward hatch. See, e.g., figure 5.
Figure 5 – Livestock pen on the Boucher model in the Boston MFA
I noted that neither of the Boucher livestock pens had a way to get the animals or their caretakers in or out.
George Campbell includes drawings of a chicken coop and a livestock pen in his book China Tea Clippers.[vii] See figure 6.
Figure 6 – Campbell - pens
I decided to base the chicken coops for my model on the Cutty Sark and Charles W. Morgan examples and the livestock pen on the ones in the Boucher models. See figures 7 and 8 (not to scale).
Figure 7 – Chicken Coop
Figure 8 – Livestock pen
The size of the chicken coop is based on measurements I took on the Cutty Sark and the measurements of the livestock pen are based on examining the Boucher models. I chose an inside height of 4 feet for the livestock pen based on what would have been needed for full grown sheep and possible for their caretakers to get into if the caretakers were the “shops boys” that were often part of the crew of large sailing vessels.[viii]
Except for the actual dimensions, the construction of the slatted sides of the chicken coops and the livestock pen is the same. You take a thin sheet of boxwood, thick as you want the slats to be and as wide as the side of the coop or pen will be. You then glue small strips of boxwood across the sheet, one strip for the bottom rail of the side and one strip for the top rail of the side. See figure 9.
Figure 9 – side before padding
Figure 9 shows what will be the four sides for the livestock pen on a single sheet but, except for size, the sheet for the chicken coops looks the same because I made three chicken coops, each of which had one slatted side, for the model. You use white glue to glue the strips to the boxwood sheet.
Later in the process, you will need to cut slots between the slats so you need filler to support the boxwood sheet during the cutting. To provide the filler you glue strips of basswood that are sized to just fit between the rails. See figure 10.
Figure 10 – side with filler strips
You use a glue that will dissolve in acetone to glue in the backing. I used SIG-MENT, but some types of glue for plastic models such as Testors should also work.
You also need to have something to hold onto when sawing the slots between the slats and a padding sheet for holding the slotting guide. So, you glue on a thin sheet of basswood or pear over the boxwood sheet and a thick piece of wood onto the filler strips. Use the acetone dissolving glue here as well. See figure 11 and the closeup in figure 12.
Figure 12 – side with padding and backing
Figure 13 – closeup of final side sandwich
You now need to make the cuts between the slats. I used the gig I developed for the Byrnes table saw to make the cuts[ix], carefully adjusting the depth of cut to just barely cut through the padding and through the boxwood sheet without cutting to deeply into the boxwood rails. See figure 14.
Figure 14 – Side sandwich with cuts
You then cut the side sandwich into the multiple sides. See figure 15.
Figure 15 – Side sandwich cut apart
You then toss the pieces into acetone to dissolve away the glue holding the filler, padding and backing. This results in the actual sides for the coops or pen. See figure 16.
Figure 16 - sides
Now it’s just a matter of making tops, bottoms and, for the chicken coops, sides and putting the parts together. See figure 17 for a view of three chicken coops in the process of being assembled.
Figure 17 – Chicken coops being assembled.
Figure 18 shows an assembled and painted chicken coop with a dime to show the size.
Figure 18 – Assembled chicken coop
With “12 dozen hens and roosters; 3 turkeys; and 1 gobbler” the Flying Cloud must have had more than one chicken coop – I decided to include 3 coops, one on each side of the main deck house and one in front of the livestock pen over the forward hatch. Figure 19 shows the pen and coops installed on the model.
Figure 19 – all installed