The House Blog

In the colonial period, scurvy was one of the greatest curses of sailors around the world. Of course, the healthy breakfasts served here at Historic Newport House Bed & Breakfast (only five minutes walk from Colonial Williamsburg) would prevent modern guests from being afflicted by scurvy, which is caused by a lack of vitamin C in the diet. However, in the colonial period, many sailors were away from land and fresh food for months at a time, and their diet often included no vitamin C. As result, their teeth began to fall out, and they would grow weaker and die. The great George Anson, who had lost over a thousand men to scurvy as he sailed around the world in 1740-1744, was promoted to head of the Royal Navy in 1748, and one of the first things he did was appoint a committee of leading scientists to find a cure or preventive for scurvy. They eventually found that limes (which last much better than other citrus fruits) worked best, and that resulted in British sailors being called "lime-juicers" -- and even today, some people still call the British "Limeys."

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by John Fitzhugh Millar

Breakfasts here at historic Newport House Bed & Breakfast (only five minutes walk from Colonial Williamsburg) are usually run as some sort of historical seminar (unless guests clearly are not interested in history, in which case we simply serve breakfast unadorned). One of the stories we most frequently recount is how the American Navy got founded in October 1775. Those mornings, we usually serve as the principal dish Jonnycakes (note spelling with no H). Jonnycakes, which are very seldom served in modern America, were among the most popular breakfasts of the colonial period. George Washington used to say that if he had not had Jonnycakes he had not had breakfast! Jonnycakes are a cornmeal pancake, which was usually eaten with some kind of sauce or jam from the Caribbean; we usually provide up to six: molasses, lime curd, pineapple jam, nutmeg jam, guava jelly, and banana jam. At the end of the story, I usually say that Rhode Island Independence Day (4 May 1776) is still a state holiday in RI, with flags, speeches and parades, and all that happened just so we could serve our Jonnycakes laced with the same kind of rum they used 250 years ago (rum being then an important ingredient).

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By John Fitzhugh Millar

Many of our guests here at historic Newport House Bed & Breakfast (only five minutes walk from Colonial Williamsburg) ask me how I came to build full-size operational copies of Revolutionary War ships for the Bicentennial. It is always fun to tell a story like this one, but I thought it was also worth setting down for readers to see. It was exciting for me as I lived through it, and I find that writing about it gives me a chance to re-live some of that excitement.

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Some of our guests at historic Newport House Bed & Breakfast in Williamsburg have heard rumors that I had met Queen Elizabeth II, so they ask about the details. My story has to be one of the more unusual about anyone meeting the Queen, and as far as I know the Queen never learned about the details.

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Here at historic Newport House Bed & Breakfast, only 6 minutes' walk from Colonial Williamsburg, we are frequently asked about how to acquire colonial clothing. As a result, we purchased a nice selection of colonial attire for men and women, and we offer it (to our B&B guests exclusively) for rent at reasonable rates, whether for their entire stay here, or simply to go out to dinner one time. No one else in Williamsburg offers this service.

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