Lots of things didn’t work out as planned with Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Quebec, and food was one of them. The army took a lot of food with them, but perhaps not enough, and a lot of what they took got spoiled; for example, they had some barrels of dry bread, but water leaked into them, “swelled the bread, burst the casks, as well as soured the whole bread. The same fate attended a number of fine casks of peas.”
By early October, wrote surgeon Isaac Senter, the army had little more to eat than salt pork and flour. By late October, they hardly even had any of that. Senter recorded some memorable things that they ate.
October 25th: “I found them [a few soldiers who were giving up and turning back for fear of starving to death] almost destitute of any eatable whatever, except a few candles, which were used for supper, and breakfast the next morning, by boiling them in water gruel, &c.”
October 27th: “Our bill of fare for last night and this morning consisted of the jawbone of a swine destitute of any covering. This we boiled in a quantity of water, that with a little thickening constituted our sumptuous eating.”
November 1st: “Our greatest luxuries now consisted in a little water, stiffened with flour, in imitation of shoemakers’ paste, which was christened with the name of Lillipu. Instead of the diarrhea, which tried our men most shockingly in the former part of our march, the reverse was now the complaint, which continued for many days. We had now arrived as we thought to almost the zenith of distress. Several had been entirely destitute of either meat or bread for many days. … The voracious disposition many of us had now arrived at, rendered almost any thing admissible. In company was a poor dog, [who had] hitherto lived through all the tribulations, became a prey for the sustenance of the assassinators. This poor animal was instantly devoured, without leaving any vestige of the sacrifice. Nor did the shaving soap, pomatum [a salve or ointment that was used kind of like hair gel], and even the lip salve, leather of their shoes, cartridge boxes, &c., share any better fate…”
A soldier named Richard Vining wrote about eating an owl.
Fortunately, on November 2nd, some men who had gone ahead sent back some food from a Canadian settlement, and the soldiers “sat down, eat our rations, blessed our stars, and thought it luxury.”
Sources
The Journal of Isaac Senter on a Secret Expedition against Quebec.
The Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts of the War for Independence. Edited by John C. Dann.
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