Alaskan law requires all light aircraft to carry "survival gear", including food. Therefore, the blue-and-white Sailor Boy Pilot Bread boxes are ubiquitous at Alaskan airstrips, in cabins, and in virtually every village. Unlike the traditional hardtack recipe, Sailor Boy Pilot Bread contains leavening and vegetable shortening. Hardtack is also a common pantry item in Hawaii, and The Diamond Bakery's "Saloon Pilot" cracker is available there in grocery and convenience stores.
|
|
The name is derived from "tack", the British sailor slang for food. It is known by other names including brewis (possibly a cognate with "brose"), cabin bread, pilot bread, sea biscuit, soda crackers, sea bread (as rations for sailors), ship's biscuit, or pejoratively as dog biscuits, molar breakers, sheet iron, tooth dullers, armor plates (Germany) and worm castles. Australian and New Zealand military personnel knew them with some sarcasm as ANZAC wafers (not to be confused with Anzac biscuit).
|
|
Retail shelf of Sailor Boy Pilot Bread in the Stuaqpaq ("big store") AC Value Store in Utqiagvik, Alaska Interbake Foods of Richmond, Virginia, produces most, if not all, of the commercially available hardtack in the United States, under the "Sailor Boy" label. As of January 2015, 98 percent of its production goes to Alaska. Alaskans are among the last to still eat hardtack as a significant part of their normal diet. Originally imported as a food product that could endure the rigors of transportation throughout Alaska, hardtack has remained a favored food even as other, less robust foods have become more readily available.
|
|
Pearson & Sons Bakery opened in Massachusetts in 1792, and they made a biscuit called pilot bread for consumption on long sea voyages. In 1889, William Moore acquired Pearson & Sons Bakery, Josiah Bent Bakery, and six other bakeries to start the New York Biscuit Company. Adolphus Green (1843–1917) started the American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company in 1890 after acquiring 40 different bakeries. Then Moore, Green, and John G. Zeller (Richmond Steam Bakery) all merged in 1898 to form the National Biscuit Company, and Green was named president. Zeller was president of National Biscuit Company from 1923–1931.
|
|
In the period before the Bolshevik victory, trade goods included "foodstuffs, canned milk, canned fruit, clothing of every kind (including frilly things for women), hardware of all kinds, toys for children, a great many luxuries which many of them had never known before." Trade goods mentioned at other locations in Swenson's narrative include flour, wieners (in barrels), oranges, sugar, tea, tobacco, pilot bread, eggs, calico, dishes, needles, thread, knives, pots, pans, chamber pots, firearms and ammunition, motor launches, gasoline, kerosene, Mackinaws and other waterproof clothing, boots, caps, heavy woolen clothing, and corduroy breeches with lacings on the legs. Customers included Russians as well as natives.Swenson pp 162-163 and various locations Alcohol is not mentioned in his lists of trade goods.
|
|