3 July 2024
Grog is another name for booze. Originally, it applied specifically to a mix of rum and water, often with added sugar and lime juice, served to sailors in the Royal Navy, and over time it came to be applied to any spirit or beer. The etymology of the word has all the trappings of a false etymology, except that, as far as we know, it is true.
The drink is named after Admiral Edward Vernon (1684–1757) whose sailors had nicknamed Old Grog. He was a famed Royal Navy officer, most noted for the 1739 capture of Portobelo, Panama during the War of Jenkin’s Ear (which is hands-down the best-named war ever). Today, it is hard to grasp how famous he was. He was an A-list celebrity in his day: Portobello Road in London is named for his victory; Thomas Arne composed Rule, Brittania! during the subsequent celebrations; and George Washington’s estate in Virginia, Mount Vernon, is named for him as well—George’s elder brother Lawrence, who built Mount Vernon, had served aboard Vernon’s flagship as a marine officer in 1741.
Vernon got his nickname from his habit of wearing a grogram cloak while on deck during foul weather. Grogram is a coarse fabric made from any of a variety of fibers, such as silk, mohair, or wool, and often stiffened with gum. The name is an anglicization of the French gros grain (large or coarse grain).
In the eighteenth century, Royal Navy sailors were given a daily ration of rum of half an imperial pint (284 ml or 9.6 US ounces). Needless to say, if consumed in one go it would make a sailor seriously drunk. Concerned over the condition and functionality of his ships’ crews, in August 1740 Vernon ordered the captains of the ships in his squadron to dilute the rum ration with water, mixed with sugar and lime juice to make it drinkable (Ship’s water was often foul.), and to serve it in two portions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The sailors would still get their hefty allotment of booze—to deny them that would spark mutiny—but it would keep them from getting falling-down drunk.
Vernon’s order came in two parts, issued from his flagship, HMS Burford. The first reads:
Burford, at Port Royal,
August 4, 1740
Whereas the swinish vice of drunkenness is but too visibly increasing in our mariners in his Majesty’s Service, attended with the most fatal effects both to their morals and their health, from whence arises a brutal disregard to their duty as Christians, and their being thoughtlessly hurry’d into all sorts of crimes as well as being visibly debilitated and destroy’d in their constitutions, which it may be justly apprehended is owing to their drinking their allowance in spirituous liquor at once, and without any mixture to allay the heat of it, which of itself is sufficient to intoxicate and gradually destroy them.
And it is of the utmost consequence both for his Majesty’s Service and the preservation of their morals and lives that some remedy should be provided against so growing an evil and of such dangerous consequence both to their souls and bodies. And you are hereby required and directed to consult with your Surgeon and to make me a return in writing severally under your hand and his, how you think so growing an evil may most effectually be remedy’d, it being as I apprehend greatly for his Majesty’s Service as well as for the preservation of the men’s morals and health that some speedy remedy should be apply’d to cure so dangerous and growing an evil.
And you will take into your consideration whether their spirituous liquor being mixed in some due proportion of water daily when it is issued to them, or any part of it being abated for a proportion of sugar being mixed with it for making it more palatable, may not be in some sort of a remedy to it, and will give your opinions with that care and consideration as the spiritual and temporal welfare of your fellow subjects as well as his Majesty’s Service may require of you. Given,etc.
E.V.
The second, two and half weeks later, reads:
Burford, at Port Royal,
August 21, 1740
Whereas it manifestly appears by the returns made to my general order of the 4th of August, to be the unanimous opinion of both Captains and Surgeons, that the pernicious custom of the seamen drinking their allowance of rum in drams, and often at once, is attended with many fatal effects to their morals as well as their health, which are visibly impaired thereby, and many of their lives shortened by it, besides the ill consequences arising from stupefying their rational qualities, which makes them heedlessly slaves to every passion; and which have their unanimous opinion cannot be better remedied than by ordering their half pint of rum to be daily mixed with a quart of water, which they that are good husbandmen, may, from the saving of their salt provisions and bread, purchase sugar and limes to make more palatable to them.
You are therefore hereby required and directed, as you tender both the spiritual and temporal welfare of his Majesty’s subjects, and preserving sobriety and good discipline in his Majesty’s Service, to take particular care that rum be no more served in specie to any of the ship’s company under your command, but that the respective daily allowance of half a pint a man for all your officers and ship’s company, be every day mixed with the proportion of a quart of water to every half pint of rum, to be mixed in a scuttled butt kept for that purpose, and to be done upon deck, and in the presence of the Lieutenant of the Watch, who is to take particular care to see that the men are not defrauded in having their full allowance of rum, and when so mixed it is to be served to them in two servings in the day, the one between the hours of 10 and 12 in the morning, and the other between 4 and 6 in the afternoon.
And you are to take care to have other scuttled butts to air and sweeten their water for their drinking at other times, and to give strict charge to your Lieutenants in their respective Watches to be very careful to prevent any rum and all spirituous liquors being privately conveyed on board the ship by your own boats or any others, and both you and they must expect to answer for the ill-consequences that may result from any negligence in the due execution of these orders.
The practice of serving grog quickly spread to other ships in the navy, and we see the first mention of grog in print in February 1749, when the following account was printed in a number of British newspapers:
The next day we met a Spanish Sloop from Cadiz, going into the Havannah, who told us of the Peace: I cursed him for coming in our Way, for we should have gone and taken all the Galleons else, and been as rich as Princes; I am sure we deserved it, for we lived at short Allowance all the Cruize, and but two Quarts of Water a Day, to make it hold out in Hopes of meeting them (but short Allowance of Grog was worst of all).
In 1781, Royal Navy physician Thomas Trotter immortalized Vernon’s creation of grog in a poem that was published in 1790:
THE ORIGIN OF GROG.
Written on board the Berwick, a few days before Admiral Parker’s engagement with the Dutch fleet, on the 5th of August 1781.
By Doctor Trotter.
(Tune, “Vulcan contrive me such a Cup.”)
’Tis sung on proud Olympus’ hill
The Muses bear record,
Ere half the gods had drank their fill
The sacred nectar sour’d.
At Neptune’s toast the bumper stood,
Britannia crown’d the cup;
A thousand Nereids from the flood
Attend to serve it up.
“This nauseous juice,” the monarch cries,
“Thou darling child of fame,
Tho’ it each earthly clime denies,
Shall never bear they name.
“Ye azure tribes that rule the sea,
And rise at my command,
Bid Vernon mix a draught for me
To toast his native land.”
Swift o’er the waves the Nereids flew,
Where Vernon’s flag appear’d;
Around the shores they sung “True Blue†,”
And Britain’s hero cheer’d.
A mighty bowl on deck he drew,
And filled it the brink;
Such drank the Burford’s gallant crew‡,
And such the gods shall drink.
The sacred robe which Vernon wore§,
Was drenched within the same;
And hence his virtues guard our shore,
And Grog derives its name.
To Heaven they bore the pond’rous vase,
From Porto Bello’s spoil;
And all Olympia’s bumpers blaze
With “Health to Britain’s islel”
Gay with a cup Apollo sung,
The Muses join’d the strain;
Mars cried “Encore!” and Vulcan rung—
“Let’s drink her o’er again.”
“Some signal gift,” they all exclaim,
“And worthy of the skies,
Shall long protect this island’s name,
And see her Genius rise.
“Henceforth no foes her coasts shall brave,
Her arts and arms shall crown,
Her gallant tars shall rule the wave,
And Freedom be her own.”
With three times three, the deed was sign’d
And seal’d at Jove’s command,
The mandate sent on wings of wind,
To hail the happy land.
(Chorus.)
This cup divine, ye sons of worth,
Was fill’d for you alone,
And he that drinks is bound by oath,
To sink with Britain’s sun.
The notes read:
† A favourite Song.
‡ Flag-ship, at the taking of Porto Bello.
§ Admiral Vernon usually wore a grogram cloak in bad weather, from which the sailors call’d him Old Grog; hence the name, in honour of him, was transferred to the spirit and water, because he was the first officer who ordered it in this manner on board his Majesty's ships.
The Vernon story has all the hallmarks of an etymythology, but despite it sounding like a post-hoc rationalization, it has evidence to support its being true. First, it is well established that Vernon was indeed nicknamed Old Grog, and he did in fact issue the said order in 1740 while commanding the West Indies station. The first known use of grog in print is only a few years later in an account of events aboard a ship on that same station. And Trotter’s poem, while written some decades after the fact, is still close enough in time for first-hand accounts of the term’s origin to have existed.
There have been some claims of pre-1740 citations, which would disprove the idea of Vernon’s order being the origin of grog, but these prove to be inaccurate. One such claim is that it appears in a ballad titled “The Pensive Maid,” written 1672–85. A version of the ballad containing the word grog appears in an 1893 collection of such seventeenth-century songs. The ballad tells the tale of a sailor who goes off to sea, leaving his love to wait for his return. Years pass, and assuming he is dead, the woman marries someone else. When the sailor returns and goes into a pub to drink with a friend, he finds the landlady is his lost love:
In a public-house then they both sot down,
And talk’d about Admirals of great renown,
And drunk’d as much grog as come to half-a-crown,
This here strange man and Jack Robinson.
Then Jack call’d out, the reckoning to pay;
The Landlady came in, in fine array,
“My eyes and limbs! Why here’s Polly Gray![“]
[“]Who’d ha’ thought of meeting here?” says Jack Robinson.
But the seventeenth-century dating is a misreading of the collection in which it appears. The ballad does indeed originally date to that period, but the editor of the collection explains, albeit rather elliptically and unclearly, that the verse containing the word grog is a later rewriting of the ending of the original ballad to give it a somewhat happier ending. The original ends with the sailor going off to his death, and in the later version, instead of dying, he returns to sea. Not exactly a happy ending, but still happier. The appearance of grog in close proximity to Admirals of great renown functions as an allusion to the word’s origin in Vernon’s nickname, indicating that this revision postdates 1740.
It's also sometimes claimed that grog makes an appearance in Daniel Defoe’s 1718 The Family Instructor, but this is another later revision of a text. The line, spoken by a Black enslaved man named Toby, supposedly reads:
make the sugar, make the grog, much great work, much weary work all day long.
But the 1718 original has no mention of grog:
Toby, says the Boy to him, you say you no know GOD; where were you born?
Toby. Me be born in Berbadoes.
Boy. Who lives there, Toby?
Toby. There lives white Mans, white Womans, Negro Mans, Negro Womans, just so as live here.
Boy. What, and not know GOD!
Toby. Yes, the white Mans say GOD Prayers; no much know GOD.
Boy. And what do the black Mans do?
Toby. They much Work, much Work; so say GOD Prayers, not at all.
Boy. What Work do they do, Toby?
Toby. Makee the Sugar, makee the Ginger; much great Work, weary Work, all Day, all Night.
So it appears that despite his many achievements, Vernon’s most lasting legacy is as a slang term for booze.
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