The story of the U.S.S. Constitution and her drunkard sailors. A great story, so I forwarded it on, and what do you know, Ben debunks it thoroughly:
What a load of bollocks.
As to the alcohol detail, working it out on fingers and toes, it comes to over 3 gallons of liquor per person per day. 12 pints of rum would be a big day for me and I probably wouldn’t want to get up and do it all over again the next day. And by day 100 …
But the big honking red flag here is that the US was at war with FRANCE, not Britain, at the time. Ponder for a moment the concept of a US ship (when the US Navy was brand new and very small) sinking this many British ships and, ahem, sailing up the Firth of Clyde to — this gets good — raid a distillery. I think some response from the Royal Navy would have been considered …
And the ship was launched on the 22nd, not the 27th.
Of course, this wouldn’t stop, oh, the SECRETARY OF THE NAVY from repeating it as fact!
Ben, you should start your own blog.