Benjamin Boster

Because hardtack biscuits were baked hard, they would stay intact for years if kept dry.

For long voyages hardtack was baked four times, rather than the more common two, and prepared six months before sailing.

Because it is dry and hard, hardtack, when properly stored and transported, will survive rough handling and temperature extremes.

Dry hardtack is dense and virtually inedible.

Troops issued it usually made it edible by dampening or crushing the biscuits.

When James VI and I set sail for Norway in October 1589, his provisions included 15,000 biscuit bakes.

In 1665, Samuel Pepe's first regularized naval victualing in the Royal Navy, with varied and nutritious rations, to include one pound daily of good, clean, sweet, sound, well-baked, and well-conditioned wheaten biscuit.

By at least 1731 it was officially codified in naval regulation that each sailor was rationed one pound of biscuit per day.

Hardtack, crumbled or pounded fine and used as a thickener, was a key ingredient in New England's seafood chowders from the late 1700s.

In 1801, Josiah Bent began a baking operation in Milton, Massachusetts, selling watercrackers made of flour and water that would be resistant to deterioration during long sea voyages from the Port of Boston.

These were also used extensively as a source of food by the gold prospectors who migrated to the gold mines of California in 1849.

Since the journey took months, hardtack was stored in the wagon trains.

Bent's company later sold the original hardtack crackers used by troops during the American Civil War.

The G.H.

Bent Company operated in Milton and sold these items to Civil War reenactors and others until 2018.

By 1818, the United States Navy had outlined that each sailor was to be given 14 ounces of bread per day as part of their daily ration, while serving on board in the form of hardtack.

The procurement of these stores was the responsibility of the ship's purser, and was not strictly outlined by the Board of Navy Commissioners.

During the American Civil War, three-by-three-inch hardtack was shipped from Union and Confederate storehouses.

Civil War soldiers generally found their rations to be unappealing and joked about the poor quality of the hardtack in a satirical song, Hardtack Come Again No More.

The song was sung to the tune of the Stephen Foster song, Hard Times Come Again No More, and featured lyrics describing the hardtack rations as being old and very wormy and causing many stomachs sore.