When we get children onboard LV50 an essential part of the tour is life on board a lightship. The discussion will always wind around to what did they eat. We’ll tell them that LV50 had no electricity so couldn’t have a fridge or freezer, they had to do their own cooking and more importantly, bring their own food on to last up to 2 months. So what food could they bring? Once they’ve got over horror of life without pizza, no chicken nuggets and absolutely no ‘pop’, the conversation often comes around to tin cans.
We’ve generally pooh poohed the idea. ‘Tin cans weren’t around then’, ‘nobody had them’ or ‘they weren’t really around until WW1’ we’d dismissively comment. Not because we’d ever really looked at the question, just that we’d never heard anyone talk about tin cans in the1890’s. Is this true or is it one of those lies we’ve been telling small children?
We thought it was about time to find out.
The story turned out to be much more interesting than we thought. The humble tin can was central to British naval dominance of the world, an essential part of the dark web of colonialism and one of the technologies that enabled the mass destruction of the world wars. Was the tin can responsible for the death of millions of soldiers?
To read the rest of the story on our website Click here.
It might not change your mind, but you’ll never look at a tin of beans again in the same way.
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