I looked him up and he is English. Weren't English sailors called Limeys because of the lime juice in their rations, specifically for scurvy prevention? He should have signed up with the Admiralty instead of the pirates.
The lime juice was meant as a cheaper alternative to lemon juice. And it wasn't very effective, lmao. National militaries and sabotaging the health of their troops to save a buck - name a more iconic duo.
It was cheaper in the sense of they imported from limes from the Carribean and lemons from India, which with no Suez canal is a pretty big difference. And at the same time they invented steam power, shortening voyages so the reduced effectiveness wasn't noticed until longer voyages due to newer military doctrines occurred again
Well, the reduced effectiveness was noticed. It created significant uncertainty, funny enough, over the actual causes of scurvy, since apparently citrus fruit wasn't enough, until more rigorous studies happened in the 20th century.
thats true, i took vitamin c like crazy when i was out of copper, it didnt do a thing. so i tried copper, was fine for a while, got worse again despite copper, then took vitamin c. went from looking like a corpse in looking merely a bit sick in 24 hours.