grog , when defined most narrowly, is rum diluted with water. Although it has roots in the seafaring life during the first half of the eighteenth century, the word later came to be used more generically to refer to any and all types of alcoholic beverage.
“Grog” was first introduced to the British Navy in 1740 by Admiral Edward Vernon. Spirits had long been part of a seaman’s daily rations in the British Navy (as well as many others), and Vernon took note of the “pernicious custom of the seamen drinking their allowance of rum in drams, and often at once.” Given that among the tasks of seamen was to scramble high aloft in the rigging to furl and unfurl sails, alcohol-fueled instability was a liability. Vernon announced that henceforth the daily spirits ration would be issued diluted with four parts of water to every part of rum, and it would be split and served twice daily, rather than all at once (the proportion of water to rum varied over time; from 1937 until the ration was discontinued in 1970, it was a more reasonable two parts water to one of rum).
Like the term “rum,” grog became a broad-brush term for any sort of liquor, and references crop up to grog shops, grog bowls, and the like. An 1898 article in the Overland Monthly and Out West magazine noted of US presidents Polk, Hayes, and Harrison that “all three knew good grog when they tasted it.” Later still, Donn “Don the Beachcomber” Beach appropriated the name for his Navy Grog (first found in print in 1942), a rum, grapefruit, and honey drink that became one of the great tiki classics, even if it is in fact a punch and not a grog at all. See Beach, Donn; and punch.
Recipe: With all due ceremony, combine two to four parts water with one part 54.5 percent ABV rum. See navy-strength.
Pack, James. Nelson’s Blood: The Story of Naval Rum. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1982.
By: Wayne Curtis