Hardtack Hash from Steerage on a Victorian Ocean Liner

TL;DR

Victorian steerage passengers survived on bland hardtack hash made from sea biscuits and salt pork, cooked themselves under miserable, cramped, rat-infested conditions.

Key Points

• 1.The 1855 British Passengers Act set minimum rations for steerage. Minimums included flour, oatmeal, rice, dried peas, potatoes, salt beef and pork, tea, sugar, and navy biscuits; butter and lime juice only provided on voyages over 84 days.
• 2.The recipe comes from 'Cookery for Seaman' (1894). Biscuit hash calls for 6 pounds of soaked hardtack, 2 pounds salt pork, dripping, onions, carrot, turnip, pepper, and mixed spice, baked into squares — a dish Max describes as 'super bland.'
• 3.Hardtack was notoriously destructive — nicknamed 'molar breakers.' Made from whole wheat flour, salt, and water, baked 3 hours at 300°F then 3–4 more hours at 200°F, they had to be pounded with a hammer and soaked overnight before eating.
• 4.Robert Louis Stevenson documented steerage conditions firsthand in 1879. Traveling second class on the steamship Devonia, he described steerage as 'eight pens of sixteen bunks apiece,' lit by two lanterns, filled with sick passengers and 'farmyard chorus' noises.
• 5.Sanitation was catastrophic — hundreds of passengers shared one or two privies. There were no showers; one basin on deck served all steerage passengers, and rats freely roamed the ship, including climbing into passengers' beds at night.
• 6.Steerage tickets still cost roughly half a year's wages for an average worker. Despite the price, passengers had to cook their own rations, often fighting over a single open-deck stove that was doused with saltwater at nightfall, leaving many eating raw food.
• 7.A class below steerage existed: 'deck passengers.' On short voyages under a week, these ticketholders had no shelter and stayed on deck in all weather; Rudyard Kipling noted they ate offal flavored with insect powder to keep the ants off.