Hot Drinks on the Bridge?

[J Sheehan]

A thought has just occurred to me; considering how cold the night of April 14th / 15th was, and how the cold affected those on duty, what was the policy of having/allowing hot drinks on the bridge for those on duty?

Surely having hot drinks while on duty would be an important factor to keep morale up, as well as to help keep the officers and other crew warm while they were on duty in such a cold place.

 

[Steven Christian]

I'm sure it was available for them. I can't really say how things were done in the civilian fleet. My experiance aboard ship and my shore duty assignments were that the US Navy ran on coffee. And that was not just in cold weather. That was 24/7 365 days a year. I would make an educated guess it was the same for them. Of course they would probably have wanted hot tea. Maybe not the helmsman while his hands were on the wheel but the others I don't see why not as long as it didn't interfere with their duties. Might have had to step around a corner to grab a cup then back to their post.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

My experiance aboard ship and my shore duty assignments were that the US Navy ran on coffee. And that was not just in cold weather. That was 24/7 365 days a year. I would make an educated guess it was the same for them. Of course they would probably have wanted hot tea

By "them", I am guessing that you meant the largely British crew of the Titanic; you would be right in assuming that most of them would probably have preferred a hot cuppa tea over coffee. Having said that, I learned many years ago that the preference for tea among the Brit genteel folk actually started later than some believe, probably in the colonial era. Before then, importing tea was a very expensive process and so only the rich could afford it. During Shakespearean times for example, most people drank coffee as the standard beverage.

 

[Steven Christian]

By "them", I am guessing that you meant the largely British crew of the Titanic; you would be right in assuming that most of them would probably have preferred a hot cuppa tea over coffee. Having said that, I learned many years ago that the preference for tea among the Brit genteel folk actually started later than some believe, probably in the colonial era. Before then, importing tea was a very expensive process and so only the rich could afford it. During Shakespearean times for example, most people drank coffee as the standard beverage.

Yes I have read that. When Europe starting importing from the new world and Africa many things became popular. There were coffee houses in England and the Netherlands that were a popular gathering place. They took to sugar and tobacco quit well too. Sugar has been around for millennium but was a luxury until they started mass producing it. I'm not sure how they did things on the bridge. 2 years aboard my ship I never saw the bridge. But everywhere else on the ship every shop had a coffee pot going and the galley had it available 24 hours a day.

 

[Kiku]

A thought has just occurred to me; considering how cold the night of April 14th / 15th was, and how the cold affected those on duty, what was the policy of having/allowing hot drinks on the bridge for those on duty?

Surely having hot drinks while on duty would be an important factor to keep morale up, as well as to help keep the officers and other crew warm while they were on duty in such a cold place.

If anyone REALLY deserved hot drinks, it would have been those poor look-outs up in the crow's nest...

 

[Arun Vajpey]

If anyone REALLY deserved hot drinks, it would have been those poor look-outs up in the crow's nest...

True, but it would have been impractical given their position. You can't expect anyone to climb that narrow ladder within the foremast carrying two cups of hot tea. Moreover, the lookouts' shifts were 2 hours at a time, under tough conditions certainly but still only 2 hours. They probably had their cuppa just before and after each shift.

 

[J Sheehan]

Apart from tea, do you think that hot chocolate, or hot cocoa would have been served on the bridge as well?

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Apart from tea, do you think that hot chocolate, or hot cocoa would have been served on the bridge as well?

I have an indirect answer to that question based on a snippet from Walter Lord's book A Night To Remember. In Chapter 10, the lifeboat survivors started arriving alongside the rescue ship Carpathia and were hauled on board one by one. Among the survivors in Lifeboat #7 were Mrs Ruth Dodge and her son, the 5-year old Washington Dodge Jr (in fact, both were rescued on Lifeboat #5 originally and later transferred to #7, according to Colonel Gracie); according to the book, a steward on board the Carpathia offered Master Dodge a cup of coffee but the boy told him that he preferred cocoa. That too was promptly served.

 

[Mike Spooner]

My favourite hot drink on a cold day or night time is beef tea. As for a lookouts in the crow nest a unofficial hip flask with rum or brandy wouldn't go a miss.