Those days a part of every ship was known as "the hen coops" where ducks, geese and chickens were confined.
They came in due time through the butcher shop and the galley to the cabin table.

The cook was an able, swearing man whose culinary experience had been acquired on a Nantucket whaler.

Cooks who could stand up for service every day in a small ship on an angry sea when the galley rattled like a dice box in the hands of a nervous player, were hard to get.

Their constitutions were apt to be better than their art.
The food was of poor quality, the cooking a tax upon jaw, palate and digestion, the service unclean.

When good weather came, by and by, and those who had not tasted food for days began to feel the pangs of hunger the ship was filled with a most passionate lot of pilgrims.