Navy Flake and the Rum Tradition

Navy flake is the modern name for a preparation tradition born from the need to compress tobacco for storage aboard ship. Products of the same tradition are known in the trade as "navy cut" and "navy flake"; since this designation does not belong to a single producer, quite different blends on the market can carry the same descriptor.

A Practical Problem Aboard Ship

In the age of sail, tobacco's chief enemy was dryness. On voyages lasting months, leaf left loose would harden and crumble to dust, and besides that, it took up more space than the hold could spare. The solution devised with the materials available on board was simple: leaves were twisted and bound tightly with rope or a strip of canvas, and the resulting roll was left under weight for days. The compressed leaf was both less exposed to air and fit into a tiny bundle. When it was time to smoke, a thin slice was cut from the end of the roll and crumbled in the palm before being packed into the pipe; the cut piece was known as a "twist" or "curly." Today's pressed tobaccos, factory-pressed into a block and then sliced, are the mechanized descendants of this hand method.

That the tobacco was among the items distributed aboard ship in the British navy is a piece of information often repeated in maritime-history compilations; the figures for exactly when and in what quantity the ration was issued, however, vary from source to source. What stays constant is the practice: a sailor turned his issued leaf into his own roll and cut a slice as needed.