From sea biscuit to tea biscuit

Everybody enjoys a nice cup of tea with a snack - and nowadays we are spoilt for choice, both in the teas available and the food we can select to go with it but back in the 17th and 18th centuries there really wasn't much choice of what to have with your tea, especially when at sea.

Back then unfortunate sailors had to settle for 'Sea Biscuits'. Originally invented in Australia, Sea Biscuits were traditionally made out of flour, water and salt. To put it frankly; they were edible rocks. No seriously, these biscuits were so hard that if people wanted to eat one they had to smash it into powder first, mix it with water - or rum - and then drink the full mix. If they didn't make a smoothie out of the biscuits they would at least have to dip the biscuits in tea, water or even brine to soften them. 

In fact, instead of eating the sea biscuits, people often found more useful and interesting uses for the rocky little things. If they were somewhat artistic the biscuits could be used as a canvas to paint beautiful pictures, which could then be traded for supplies. Some of these artistic biscuits still survive, preserved in museums and put on display so we can appreciate how lucky we are there's some softer tea biscuits on the market today!